James Marsters on Dragonball

Lord Piccolo has a long history with Dragonball. The live-action origin film Dragonball: Evolution is only a mere introduction to the villain. Played by James Marsters, he tries to thwart the heroes from obtaining the Dragon Balls, but there’s going to be a whole lot more to Lord Piccolo.

James Marsters Talks Dragonball Evolution

“Part of the challenge was to realize that the Lord Piccolo that we see in the first film is the same person as the Piccolo that will be transformed into, which is the more recognizable one for fans who are more familiar with Dragonball Z,” James Marsters. “There’s a younger version that we’re going to get to, but as an actor, it was to realize that it was the same person in both sides of it, that he’s going to transform his body but his mind is pretty much the same.”

It may be an all too familiar story at this point, but Marsters is one of those actors who finds a way to like the villain he plays. “For me, it was taking Piccolo, the wonderful guy, and this is what I love about Piccolo, is that he’s not a nice person, he’s not trying to make friends, but he’ll never let you down because he’s living up to his own code. I always thought that was a really wonderful character because of that, and just to take that character and say, ‘Well, what would make me so angry that I’d want to destroy every human being on earth?’ To know that everybody has buttons. You can do something to anybody and they’ll get that mad. What happened to him? So hopefully it’s really the same character as we go through the next phase in the other movies.”

Dragonball

Perhaps Marsters thought too much about Piccolo. At a certain point, he cost himself epic time in the makeup chair. “The first time we did the make-up, it took 14 hours and it was nobody’s fault but my own because I was really married to the idea that my character be old and decrepit and ugly. I told them that when my girlfriend comes into Durango, I want her to run for the hills, and then she did, which was not so great. In the Manga and in the Anime, he is so old that he needs a walking stick and it’s only at the end of the season of Dragonball that he throws off the cloak and you see he’s all cut and then he starts to fight and it’s a big surprise. The difference that we’ve done is we don’t do the fake out. We just reveal him from the first shot as being powerful, but other than that, it’s kind of the same as the Manga. That was so funny because I kept saying uglier, uglier, more lines, more age, more uglier and finally after 14 hours the make-up artist just slapped me upside the head and said, ‘I’m done! Go to set!’ That was it. But then we got Edward French to come in and do the make-up and he got it down to 4 hours and I shut up. I let him do his job.”

Best known to genre fans as Spike from Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Marsters embraced a different sort of monster. “Piccolo is less tortured than Spike. Piccolo is asexual. Spike was always kind of confident except for his love life. That kind of mixed him up a little bit, but Piccolo just does not have that side to him. He’s not male or female. He’s Namek so some of the same colors as the darker aspects of Spike enjoying hurting people, being really angry, stuff like that, but just take all the sex away.”

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