Buffy the Vampire Slayer stars James Marsters and Charisma Carpenter — who reprise their respective roles of Spike and Cordelia in the Audible drama Slayers: A Buffyverse Story — have revealed how their characters have (and haven’t) changed from their canon sources.
Slayers is set within the world of Buffy, but it takes place 20 years after the show’s finale. The plot will focus on an alternate reality in which Carpenter’s Cordelia Chase, Buffy’s peer and rival from high school, is the Slayer. Marsters’ Spike, who has his hands full with rookie Slayer Indira, stumbles into this different universe and must face his former lover Drusilla again to help Cordelia. In an interview with Variety, Carpenter and Marsters were asked how it felt to play these new versions of their characters.
Cordy the Vampire Slayer and Spike the vampire
“I think I felt a bit lost,” Carpenter admitted. “…How do I play this embattled slayer, who’s living their purpose and sees it really as the burden that it is — taking on the big bad — and infusing that with the Cordelia from before, which is sassy and witty and pithy and all those superficial things? How do I balance them? So for me, it was such an interesting dilemma to figure out.”
Reviving Spike, a vampire who began as a recurring villain, was an even greater dilemma. In the final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Spike’s obsession with Buffy led him to seek redemption, but not before he had attempted to rape the iconic feminist lead character. Amber Benson, co-writer and co-director on Slayers as well as the voice of Tara, addressed the concern over Spike headlining the project, saying, “But yeah, there is problematic stuff with the character, especially around consent.” She explained, “We really wanted to do something different and not live in the past. So for us, it was sort of a reinvention of the Spike character. We wanted to see more of that human and empathetic version of Spike. That was really important to us — the more James-version of Spike.”
Slayers: A Buffyverse Story is coming soon to Audible
Other returning stars in Slayers: A Buffyverse Story include Anthony Stewart Head, Emma Caulfield Ford, Danny Strong, Juliet Landau, and James Charles Leary. Laya DeLeon Hayes debuts as the new Slayer Indira Nunnally. Christopher Golden is co-writer and co-director.
Slayers: A Buffyverse Story premieres on Audible October 12 and is available for pre-order now.
