Nathan Fillion and Sean Gunn Talk About Their Time on BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 actors Nathan Fillion and Sean Gunn both worked in Joss Whedon’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer franchise and during a recent interview with CB, they opened up about their time on those shows.

Fillion appeared as the big bad villain Caleb in the seventh and final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Gunn took on two different roles in the first season of the spinoff series, Angel. During a recent interview with CB, Fillion was asked if he'd be interested in playing an evil character like Caleb again, and he said:

"Yeah, absolutely. That was my first time playing a villain. And Joss Whedon taught me a lot about playing villains. The first thing being, the villain doesn't think he's the villain. That was very informative to me. He's not in the corner of wrenching his hands going, 'I'm the bad guy and I'm going to do something nasty.' He's justified and he is righteous, which I think makes... I'm really scared of righteous people because once they're righteous, they can't be wrong anymore. Whatever they want, they feel righteous. You can't stop them. It's the worst. So yeah, that scares me too." 

Gunn was then asked how he ended up playing two different roles in Angel. He first played a demon named Lucas in the episode "Hero," and then played Mars in the episode "She." In regards to that, he said:

"What happened there honestly is that I was up for one of the lead roles on Angel at the very beginning. So when that show was getting made, I had auditioned for one of the regular characters. Didn't get it. That's fine. That happens. But I think Joss was always kind of like, 'Let's try to find something for that guy.' And then I came on and I played the demon and it was like, 'Oh, that was cool, that was great. But maybe there's still something else.'

"And so then they just asked me again, which was such a cool thing. But that's kind of how that went down. I don't think any of it was planned. And it was certainly at a time when, nowadays the entire season of television is written all in one shot. But then it wasn't really, it was less like that. It was kind of episode-to-episode. So it was kind of like, they're going to maybe find a place for me." 

As for their roles in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Fillion played an inmate in the first Guardians of the Galaxy, and is back in the third film as a new character named Master Orgosentry Karja. Then there’s Gunn, who plays Kraglin as well as the on-set Rocket.

It’s always fun getting a little insight like this on the shows that we enjoy!