Through print interviews and Question and Answer appearances at fan conventions, James Marsters has commented on his performance of the vampire Spike in Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and on that character's status as a representation of evil, often in an effort to counteract fan 'sympathy for the devil'. In a storyline that, ultimately, became a journey towards redemption for Spike, unforeseen when the actor and character first joined the show, fan affective response towards the moral good within Spike went beyond writers' and the actor's expectations. In response to the popularity of the character with fans, James Marsters expressed a concern that young women not take the wrong message for their own life experience from his empathic portrayal of a ‘bad’ boyfriend for the heroine Buffy. In the light of the explicit canon of the Buffyverse, dictating that without a soul Spike could not be redeemed, what then is to be made of a performance that aroused fan sympathy for the character in defiance of written canon? James Marsters' assertion that "I'm always trying to play a little more soul than is written" is the point of entry for exploring the persona that is the product of both the text and the performance of Spike. I analyse the actor's approach to the character in order to illuminate the nature of that creative space where performance embodies and extends the text of Buffy by fashioning a morally complex character that has an affective impact beyond the seeming intentions of the written text. The effect of James Marsters' idiosyncratic use of that ubiquitous ‘head tilt’ is also thoroughly investigated!"