Stunt Boy:

Dead Things, Being Beat up and just having fun as a bad ass stunt guy...

Question: What does the fake blood taste like? James - I would rather eat toads than swallow any more of that stuff! All it is is strawberry Quik, it sends you into insulin hell. There is a medic standing by with a syringe because for that shot, you have to drink the mug in the Master, which is the big shot that encompasses all the action, the mug for your close-up, for your double-shot and each shot takes two or three takes to achieve. So you are chugging a big, big thing of strawberry Quik. I can't believe I still have a sweet tooth. Strawberry Quik doesn't sound that bad and I don't mean to whine but people have been known to pass out from it.

Question: Is it awkward pretending to suck peoples necks?! - James- I spit all over the girl's necks because I try to make it look like I really am chewing and so I'm always wiping their necks off and apologizing. No-one's seemed to mind so far but no. Man, it's sexier than hell. You basically get to neck with a total stranger. It's not awkward at all, just a little sloppy.

The Comic Book - "Basically we just threw around story elements first, and came up with something that we liked. My feeling was that the last episode in which we saw Spike and Dru was not a closed book at all. I kinda wondered what the hell happens the second day? I mean she's been around sniffing Angel for the last four months, and I hit her over the head and kidnap her, but what the hell happens when she wakes up? It's not happily ever after. So I wanted to put them through an adventure that would bring them back together, but I wanted to have them start very far apart, just for dramatic reasons."

"I love the stunt work. ... What's nice for the crew and the stunt choreographer is that I can fight Sarah (Michelle Gellar) , I can fight David (Boreanaz)..."

"David (Boreanaz) and I, we just love to get going. ... We just had a couple of fights on Buffy's show, and people were coming up afterward saying, 'Did he really hit you!?' We weren't leaving a whole lot of air between our punches and the guy's face, because there's that much trust."

"I hit David Boreanaz really hard... at the end of the [second] season after I get out of that damn wheelchair and Angel was like macking on my girl and everything. They gave me a soft club, which is not soft, but it's not like a metal club to beat with someone. It's like made out of really hard plastic. And they were supposed to pad David and they didn't. He thought that I was just going to use like a metal prop and then not hit him, like mime-hitting and stuff. And so I decided Spike would just nail Angel. Hard as he could. And [David] was surprised." -

"Unless my feet leave the ground, it's most likely me. If they throw me up against the wall or off a cliff, it will be Steve. I even lit my hand on fire last season. I will never do that again! I had about 15 blisters the next day, but it was nobody's fault but my own. I wanted to be butch and let the gag go too long. The scene was cut out in editing anyway. My stunt double, Steven, is obscenely good, though. He's one of the few Americans to have worked extensively in Hong Kong with people like Jackie Chan. But in last Tuesday's crossover episode, I think there was a total of five quick shots that were not me, but everything else was. Steven, though, could kick my butt, and he's teaching me."

"If anything, the fight choreography is better choreographed to my needs so that you see more of me. More and more, the choreography is stuff that I can do well enough that we don't have to cut to a stunt double, which doesn't really make Steve [Tartalia] very happy. He gets very bored. I've always wanted the fighting to be more street fighting, more dirty moves, street moves which are stuff that I'm more used to as opposed to some of the more sophisticated martial arts stuff. So, I'm always really happy when John [Medlen] choreographs a really dirty elbow move or a punch to the throat. I love that."

"I know the basics of stunt work from stage, so as far as what I like to call 'waving my arms around while other people do the real work.' Like punching and taking punches, whipping your head, I can do all that stuff, so it's good for close-ups." - James

"Yes, I've been hurt, and it was my own damn fault, too. [Once] I lit my hand on fire. But I let the burn go on way too long because I thought it would look cool. It was bubbled up all over, and it took about three months to heal. But no one on the set knew about it because it was my last day and I was too embarrassed to say anything. Besides, I didn't want to tell anyone because they had trusted me with a very dangerous stunt and I blew it, and I want them to trust me with more stunts like that. I do more fighting than most actors, because I did my own stunts when I was doing theater. They once let me throw Buffy through a glass top table with a metal frame, and whenever I see that shot, I still think, Oh God, how wrong that could have gone, considering I could have brained her on the table frame."

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