By Chris Snellgrove | Published
If you Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan who has seen Spike actor James Marsters at a convention, has probably heard something that sounds wrong: the actor’s American accent. He became famous for playing the immortal British bad boy in that show, but the English accents he plays throughout the series are completely fake. It sounded very real, and the reason for its authenticity is that Marsters received voice training from the real Englishman Anthony Stewart Head, who was offended by Marsters’ first attempts at English pronunciation.
Giles To The Rescue
The head, of course, was part of the Buffy he was broadcast from the start, and his English style made him the perfect foil for the titular Slayer. Buffy Summers was a California party girl forced into a life of monster hunting, and Head’s Giles was her studious opposite number. Spike was not introduced until season 2 and Joss Whedon planned to kill him off immediately, but the popularity of the character ensured that he stuck around at the end of the show and even appeared in the final season of the show. Angel a spinoff.
If a Buffy mainstay meant that James Marsters would have to practice his fake British style for years, but Anthony Stewart Head didn’t wait that long to help him work on it. After Marsters mispronounced an English slur, he says Head took him aside and told him, “Let’s not say that.” Fortunately, criticism is paired with a great offer: “I’ll help you now.”
Taught by Power
Speaking about the story at Dublin Comic Con, Marsters joked that it was his Buffy my partner “forced taught” me about Spike’s English accent. As he recalls, he would get a new script in his trailer in the morning and Head would come over at lunch to help him hit the lines. Apparently, Head was as tough on Marsters as Giles ever was Buffy: “we looked at the text until he was satisfied that we were there [the accent] it would never let him down again.”
Although Marsters can’t help but laugh at those early on Buffy days, he is the first to admit that Head deserves credit for Spike’s English accent. “[I owe the accent to] Tony Head,” he said, noting how the Giles actor “saved me.” He pointed out that Spike’s voice is very cute in his first appearance, giving fans an easy way to understand when the voiceover begins.
To this day, Spike remains a fan favorite Buffy character, and the man behind him is forever grateful for the voice training he received from the Chief: “if it wasn’t for him, it wouldn’t be a very good voice,” says Marsters. After all, if you want to hear more of Marsters’ original voice, it’s easy to catch shows like Those who run away (a great and neglected MCU series). Or you can listen to a song or two from Ghost of the Robot, the band Marsters is the lead singer of.
We, coming to our next view of Buffy the Vampire Slayerand we’re going to pay more attention to Spike’s approach in those first two episodes. It must be fun to notice all the ways that an expression improves over time, and it’s amazing to think that it’s all thanks to Anthony Stewart Head. It’s always surprising when actors share similarities with their most famous characters, and in Head’s case, it turns out he’s just as effective an off-screen teacher as he was on the show that made him famous.
Source: Express
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