A Buffy The Vampire Slayer Star Had A Horrible Star Trek Audition With Patrick Stewart

Even actors can be starstruck. James Marsters proved that when auditioning for "Star Trek," an experience he does not look back on fondly. 

Marsters was and is most famous for playing Spike, the bleach blond, leather-duster wearing vampire limey on "Buffy The Vampire Slayer." Spike was the one vampire on the show who was too popular for Buffy to slay. After debuting in season 2 as a villain, he stuck around until the end, became a hero and even love interest for Buffy, and then jumped ship for the final season of spin-off "Angel."

TV writers are nerds, and "Buffy" is the north star for a generation of them. It's no surprise that Marsters has parlayed his time as Spike into a stable career in genre TV. He played Brainiac on "Smallville," the origin of Superman retold for the "Buffy" generation. Jane Espenson, a "Buffy" writer who showran "Caprica" (a "Battlestar Galactica" prequel) also recruited Marsters as a villain on that show.

While "Buffy" was still going on, he tried to make the jump to the big leagues; he auditioned for the villain role in the new "Star Trek" movie. That film was "Star Trek: Nemesis" (released in 2002), where the Enterprise-E is menaced by Shinzon, a Romulan-created clone of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Sir Patrick Stewart).

Marsters told the story to SYFY in 2017: he read for Shinzon alongside Sir Stewart, but because he was "fanboying out" to be in the same room as Captain Picard, he stumbled and failed the audition. Shinzon was instead played by a young Tom Hardy. 

Apparently, even Stewart gave Marsters a look that suggested he was unimpressed. I can only imagine how withering it'd be to disappoint Captain Picard.

Marsters said the part of Shinzon was "basically mine" until he blew the audition. I can't help but wonder if him playing a British character is why he got called to play "young Patrick Stewart." Spike is English, but James Marsters is American.

To play Spike, Marsters got accent coaching from Anthony Head (who played Buffy's mentor Giles). Apparently Head, who is as English as his character is, was worried about embarrassment by association back home should Spike's voice not be up to snuff. As a result, Spike's accent was apparently good enough that people are still surprised to learn that James Marsters is from California, not Liverpool.

While James Marster is a fake Englishman, he's a true nerd. "I've been coming to conventions since I was 13-years-old dressed as Spock," he said in that aforementioned Syfy interview. He later played Lord Piccolo in the reviled "Dragonball Evolution," and was evidently the only person involved who did his homework about the source material. That earned him a chance at redemption via a part in the English dub of the anime "Dragon Ball Super."

Similarly, "Nemesis" is often considered one of the worst "Star Trek" movies, at least neck and neck with "The Final Frontier." Maybe Marsters should be happy that he bombed that audition and didn't get his Trekkie dreams tainted by association. Even so, the era of "Star Trek" TV is back. If "The Vampire Diaries" star Paul Wesley can play Captain Kirk, surely there's a guest part for an old "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" alum in there.