James Marsters reflects on fighting against controversial “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” Spike assault scene

The actor revisits how the season 6 scene "crushed" him and made him seek out therapy: "It's the darkest professional day of my life."

Just like all Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans, James Marsters also hates that problematic season 6 scene in which his character Spike attempts to sexually assault Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar).

Marsters actually fought against that scene and filming it ultimately made him seek out therapy, he recalled while appearing as a guest on Tuesday's episode of Michael Rosenbaum's Inside of You podcast.

"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."

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Marsters said that one of the female writers of the show based that scene on her own experience, but the genders were flipped.

"The writers were being asked to come up with their worst day, the day that they don't talk about, their dark secret, the one that keeps them up at night, when they really hurt somebody or when they really got hurt or made a big mistake of some kind, and then slap metaphoric fangs on top of that dark secret and tell everybody about it," he said.

"One of the the women writers actually had come up with this idea," he continued, "because in college she had gotten broken up with and she went to her ex's place and thought that if they made love one more time, everything would be fixed. She kind of forced herself and he had to physically remove her from the premises, and that was one of the most painful memories of that time of her life."

Known to be one of the most brutal scenes in all of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the infamous moment happened in "Seeing Red" (season 6, episode 19), as Spike tried to rape Buffy in her bathroom to prove his feelings for her. As the Slayer, she was able to fight him off, but Marsters disagreed with the writers on how the scene would be perceived by viewers.

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"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," he 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."

Marsters added that he "wasn't thinking" about protecting the image of his character Spike. "I was just having to do that to Sarah. I was just having to live through that reality," he 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."

But despite his personal feelings on the matter, he still had to show up to work and film the scene as scripted. "I was contracted to do this. I couldn't say no," he said. However, he ended up in physical and mental pain while shooting that scene.

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"I remember making my entrance for the first line of the scene, and I have an injury on my neck from doing too many stunts, and sometimes it pops off," he said. "It's like a pulled nerve or something, and it popped off like a gunshot. I just collapsed to the floor... I'm like, 'I guess I'm kind of tense right now.' And we got the scene in the can, and it was hell. I was in [my] personal hell."

He remembered having to lay on the ground in between takes. "I was like doing a take and then going in the corner of the set and and going into the fetal position on the cement," he said. "They were all worried. I'm like, 'Be worried. I'm not okay.'"

Marsters added that the silver lining of that terrible experience is how it led him to seek out therapy. "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," he said. "It was very painful and very destabilizing, but I came out of it a much happier person."

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This isn't the first time Marsters has spoken out against this scene. Last year, while looking back on the show for the 20th anniversary of the series finale, the actor opened up about it in an interview with RadioTimes.

"The people out there watching Buffy aren’t superheroes, so I’m going to be doing this to them," Marsters said. "You can’t flip the sexes on these characters and not have blowback, it’s going to have unintended consequences."

He also said that the writers included that scene to turn viewers against the Spike and Buffy romance (the characters were no longer together at the time of the assault scene).

"They were very frustrated because they couldn’t convince the audience to stop rooting for Spike, they did not want the audience to say, 'Spike and Buffy forever,' that’s just not what they were going for," Marsters said. "They kept having me do worse and worse things trying to get people to realize. Even Spike at one point goes, 'Hey guys, I’m evil.' Because the audience refused to do that, they finally landed on that scene."

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He added, "They kept having me do worse and worse things and finally they’re like, 'Okay, we’re just going to have him do that to Buffy, like there’s nothing else that we have that’s going to make this point.' When you know those things, maybe it will inform how you react to that scene. I don’t know if it means it was the right thing to do — I know it doesn’t seem to age well, but what I want people to know is it wasn’t a cavalier decision. It wasn’t just like, 'Oh well, these things are okay and it might be sexy and spicy if we do this.' That wasn’t what the writers were thinking at all. It was very well considered and it was coming from a good place."

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