James Marsters is best known for playing Spike on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” but it turns out filming a very controversial scene in the show ended up sending him to therapy…
James Marsters — who played bad boy Spike for several seasons on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” — had the same feeling towards a controversial scene from season 6 as just about every fan of the show.
The incident takes place in episode 19 titled “Seeing Red” when Buffy (as played by Sarah Michelle Gellar) breaks up with Spike and he attempts to sexually assault her before she eventually fights him off. The incredibly troublesome scene didn’t work with audiences and it turns out Marsters really didn’t want to film that moment in the show.
While he obviously ended up filming his part, Marsters revealed on actor Michael Rosenbaum’s podcast “Inside of You” that the scene actually forced him to go into therapy to deal with the trauma.
“Buffy sent me into therapy, actually,” Marsters said “Buffy crushed me… There was a scene where I was paired with Buffy and she breaks up with me, and then I go and I force myself on her and then she kicks me through a wall. It’s a problematic scene for a lot of people who like the show. And it’s the darkest professional day of my life.”
Marsters says the origin behind the scene actually came from one of the female writers on the show, who went through something similar herself after her boyfriend broke up with her and she thought if she could have sex with him one more time that it could save their relationship. The writer allegedly forced herself onto her ex-boyfriend and he had to physically remove her from his home to stop what was happening.
The writers used that moment but then flipped the genders and felt like it didn’t change the dynamics because Buffy is essentially a superhero and she was able to fight off Spike when he attempted to rape her. Marsters knew right away that the scene was a terrible idea.
“They thought that since Buffy was a superhero that they could flip the sexes, since Buffy could could defend herself very, very easily from this,” Marsters said. “They thought that they could have a man do it to a woman and it would be the same thing. I went to them and I said, ‘You know, guys, we’re providing a vicarious experience for the audience. Everyone who’s watching Buffy is Buffy, and they’re not superheroes, so I’m doing this to every member of the audience, and they’re going to have a very different reaction.”
The brutal scene didn’t concern Marsters as far as his character but rather he just didn’t want to go through with acting out the attempted sexual assault while working with Gellar — an actor he adored and befriended through their many years working together.
“I was just having to do that to Sarah. I was just having to live through that reality,” Marsters said. “I don’t like sexual predation scenes, anything that has to do with it. I don’t audition for those things. If there’s a movie with that kind of material, I don’t go to see the movie. If it pops up on television, I’ve got to turn the television off before I break it. I have a very visceral reaction to that stuff.”
Unfortunately because it was his job, Marsters followed through with the painful scene but it affected him in profound ways that forced him to seek out help afterwards.
As much as he clearly hates that moment from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Marsters tried to find a silver lining to the whole ordeal because getting into therapy really was good for him in the long run.
“The good thing is that I found a really good therapist, and in putting me back together from that, got into all the other stuff as good therapists will do,” Marsters said. “It was very painful and very destabilizing, but I came out of it a much happier person.”
