Buffy is back and bet than ever. All Buffy fans rejoiced for joy on October 12th when Slayers: A Buffyverse Story premiered on Audible, twenty years after the series finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This scripted audio original picks up in the Buffyverse 10 years after the events of the final episode. Since then, Spike (James Marsters) has gone deep undercover in LA, convincing the forces of darkness that he’s back to his evil ways. When his cover is compromised by sixteen-year-old Indira Nunnally (Laya DeLeon Hayes), Spike finds himself on baby-slayer-sitting duty once more. While he attempts to track down a watcher for his eager new protégé, their paths collide with the veteran Slayer of a parallel reality where Buffy Summers never existed…a reality where Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter) is the one-and-only Slayer. She needs Spike’s help with a classic big bad terrorizing her world…his old flame, Drusilla (Juliet Landau).
The Koalition spoke to James Marsters of Audible’s Slayers: A Buffyverse Story (who also serves as the narrator) during their roundtable at New York City Con to learn more about the series, his joy for the brand-new adventure that takes place after Buffy the Vampire Slayer and more.
“I think at the very beginning, the audience is going to be very concerned about where Spike is. We left him a while ago, and is he going to choose the light or the dark? He seems like he’s gone to the dark side at the very beginning, and then we find out that he hasn’t. He’s just as ornery and frustrating as he’s ever been, but he has a soul and he’s been using it properly. And now we see him try to help out a new slayer.”
“I was I was so happy that we have a new Slayer. At the at the beginning of every episode of the original property we said that for every generation there was a new Slayer and that’s a promise. We’ve never made good on and now we are. I just think that that’s where that’s where the heart is; watching someone who is old enough to realize the world is massively messed up, who’s making the decision to try to help. I think that’s where the theme is and I’m glad they stuck with that.”
As a former theater graduate and lover of the stage, Marsters compared voice acting to being back of the stage while recording Slayers: A Buffyverse Story. With the audio medium, it allowed him to be more expressive and vocal than his TV version. “As someone who does theater, in theater your face is that big and your eyes are that big, and so your job is pretty much just hanging words in the air and all the information that you’re vying about your character is pretty much the words. Doing audio, I got to go back to closet take the toolbox out and start hanging words in the air and I love it. For me it’s a lot more freeing. I was always told that was great bring it way down. I’m like this is as down as it goes this is what you got, so it was it was awesome to get to really just express and go crazy with the lines that we were graciously given by Chris Amber.”
The 10-episode drama is set in 2013 and finds Spike, the vampire with a soul, working undercover with his old demon friend Clem (James Charles Leary) to protect various slayers, including teen newbie Indira (Laya DeLeon Hayes), in Los Angeles. The story takes off when Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) arrives from another dimension, where she is the only slayer, seeking help to battle the evil Queen of the Vampires, Drusilla, (Juliet Landau), who is Spike’s ex-girlfriend.
Marsters was eager to add more to his character and work with other Buffyverse actors whom he didn’t cross paths with on the TV show but has gotten to know over the years at fan conventions. “I felt that you got to see just more of what Spike is as part of a team. What I always love is the humor and getting to do more of that but also getting to be a little bit of the heart, sort of the mascot of the team. That was a lot of fun just to not be relegated to some boring tasks but to actually be part of the gang and be a part of the full-fledged story. I was always interested in who is Spike with a soul. We’ve seen him at the very beginning of that journey and then not so much and I always thought, ‘How does he survive? How does he get lunch when he can’t kill somebody for it? How can he get new clothes when he can’t rob somebody for it?’ What I love about the project is we fast forward to 2013 and he’s had a little time to figure some things out but he’s still Spike. He hasn’t lost his snark; he hasn’t lost his fury, but he’s also got a soul and it’s and it’s more ingrained in it. What I love about the writing is they were able they’re able to put the new pieces in without losing all the cool stuff.”
The voice cast, which recorded their lines together in a studio, also includes beloved Buffy characters Giles (Anthony Head), Anya (Emma Caulfield Ford), Jonathan (Danny Strong) and Tara (Amber Benson). The Audible series relied on the actors’ vocal performances, music and sound effects to tell the compelling story. Marsters stressed the importance of being in the booth with his fellow co-star and how he grateful to Landon for pulling out his best performance during one emotional scene.
“It really is so helpful to naturally react to what the other person is saying and doing. I remember there’s a scene with Juliet and I where Drusilla is trying to tempt Spike into coming over to her side. which may not be the best thing to do. He still loves her on a certain level and there is a pull there and just she started of half crying, and I started half crying, and it was really painful. It was because she and I have a whole history together of all of these experiences in character and we didn’t have to talk about it or even think about it. It just kind of washed over us in an organic way and then the mics can kind of pick that up. It’s my favorite moment in the whole series and that cannot happen if you’re recording an isolation. We actors will feed each other, we’ll Inspire each other without even really realizing it and magic can happen. It was real, it was amazing, it was so much fun to have everybody there and even though you were in isolation booth because she had a cold, we could still see each other. It really brought it felt like doing a play. It was really great.”
To learn more about Slayers: A Buffyverse Story, check out our full interview with Marsters.
