Buffy the Vampire Slayer's James Marsters would have been way more brutal with the character of Spike, had he produced the iconic show.
Apparently, the writers "never really knew what to do" with this peroxide-blonde creature of the night and were continually pulling their hair out over the puzzle of his place in Sunnydale.
"The original idea for Buffy was that vampires were just metaphors for the challenges of high school, or the challenges of life. They were designed to be overcome, they were designed to die," Marsters, who played Spike across 97 episodes, recently told RadioTimes.
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"So trying to fit Spike long-term into that kind of show is a weird fit. And so they were always like, coming to me at the beginning of every season saying, 'We don't know what to do with you! We have a plan for the season, we have a plan for all the other characters, we have all the arcs of all the other characters, we just don't know what to do with you again.'"
The actor, who reunited with the Slayer herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, at last winter's Wolf Pack premiere, then admitted: "If it had been me producing that show, I would have killed Spike off in a heartbeat.
"As soon as the audience said, 'Oh, we want him. Oh, have him with Buffy. Oh, we love that character.' Like uh-uh. He's ruining the whole thing.
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"I would have killed me off after probably three episodes. I'm kind of a bastard when I'm producing! I'm heartless! So I'm very lucky that they had more imagination and courage than I would have shown, frankly."
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Dan is a freelance entertainment journalist. Beginning his writing career in 2014, Dan's work first graced the pages of cult publications Starburst magazine and Little White Lies before moving onto Total Film, Digital Spy, NME and Yahoo Entertainment.
In the film and TV universe, he kneels at the altar of Jim Carrey, Daniel Plainview, Mike Ehrmantraut and Paulie Walnuts.
