By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
If you are a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan who’s ever seen Spike actor James Marsters at a convention, you’ve probably heard something that sounds downright wrong: the actor’s American accent. He rose to fame playing an undead British bad boy in this series, but the English accent he sports throughout the series is completely fake. It sounded very realistic, and the reason for its authenticity is that Marsters received voice training from real Englishman Anthony Stewart Head, who was annoyed by Marsters’ early attempts at an English accent.
Giles to the rescue
Head, of course, was part of the Buffy casting from the start, and his English accent made it 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 staid, stuffy counterpart. Spike wasn’t introduced until season 2 and Joss Whedon planned to kill him off quickly, but the character’s popularity meant he stayed until the end of the series and even appeared in the final season of the series. Angel spin-off.
Become one Buffy the pillar meant that James Marsters He was going to have to use his fake British accent for years, but Anthony Stewart Head didn’t wait that long to help him work on it. After Marsters mispronounced a vulgar piece of English slang, he claims that Head took him aside and said, “We don’t say it like that.” » Fortunately, the criticism was accompanied by a very generous offer: “I will help you now. »
Tutored by force
Recounting this story at Dublin Comic Con, Marsters joked that his Buffy My co-worker “basically force-schooled me” regarding Spike’s English accent. As he remembers, he would receive a new script in his trailer in the morning and Head would come over at lunch to help him execute the lines. Apparently Head was as strict with Marsters as Giles ever was with Buffy: “we would review the script until he was convinced that it [the accent] wasn’t going to embarrass him anymore.
While Marsters can’t help but laugh at these first Buffy days, he’s the first to admit that Head deserves credit for Spike’s impressive English accent. “[I owe the accent to] Tony Head,” he said, pointing out how the Giles actor “saved me.” He pointed out that Spike’s accent is particularly iffy in his first two appearances, giving fans an easy to understand when voice tutoring really started.
To this day, Spike remains a fan favorite. Buffy character, and the man behind him is eternally grateful for the accent training he received from Head: “Without him, it definitely wouldn’t have been as good an accent,” Marsters said. By the way, if you want to know more about Marsters’ real accent, it’s easy to find on shows like The runaways (a large 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.
As for us, we come to our next rewatch of Buffy the Vampire Slayerand we’re going to pay close attention to Spike’s accent in these first two episodes. It should be fun to note all the ways the accent improves over time, and it’s crazy to think it’s all because of Anthony Stewart Head. It’s always great when actors share some similarities with their most famous characters, and in Head’s case, it turns out he’s just as effective off-screen as he ever was on the show that made him famous.
Source: Express
