care enough to stand up. And that’s great as an actor in the middle of a 16-or-20 hour day. You get to sit down a lot or lean against anything. And I had the biggest arguments with the writers, saying, “OK, I can stand on the floor [without sinking through it] – Spike can’t touch anything? I accept that, but he can float anywhere he wants to? So I could float as if I am leaning up against the wall, right?” And they said, “No, it looks weird, it looks too corporeal.” So I had to stand up. And that sucked. I didn’t feel like Spike. They really wanted me freaked out and weakened by the whole thing. They really wanted the fear of him fading away to be there for the audience. You’re working so quickly on a television show, so I just decided to play cold – I played it as if I didn’t really have a body temperature and being a ghost is just really cold, almost as if you’d just saved someone from a freezing river. When you see those rescued people in the blankets and how they look – I tried to do that.
When Spike becomes corporeal again, basically, he gets unleashed. He gets to truly be a potent force in the world, as opposed to just commenting on it and saying, “Hi, Angel, aren’t you silly?” again. Now, I get to come and say, “Come here, I’ve got something that has to happen!”

Is that really you swapping blows with David Boreanaz in Destiny?

Oh yeah! Toe-to-toe the whole day. Both David and I have done enough fights that it’s pretty much like working with another stuntman. You know, the concerns are the same. Neither of us are professional stuntmen – we’re not that good – but for actors, we’re pretty damn good. And pretty experienced, at this point.
What’s great about working with David is that you get the acting stuff as well. And I feel like we have a really good trust between the two of us. It’s never, “Oh, he’s going to do that to me – I don’t trust that!” if I had to do a cliff scene and the only thing keeping me falling over the edge was David, I’d be cool with it. Seriously. You could count on it.

David Boreanaz made his directing debut this season with Soul Purpose. Will you be directing an episode soon?
Well, I think that I’d do well with actors – I was always good with actors as a stage director. But I need to know more about the language of film. I mean, in all honestly yes, they could hire me as a director now and I could sit in the chair and say, “Action,” and get it on my resume [CV], but it would be a lie. I haven’t done my homework. I don’t want to do it before I’ve read a couple of books and really talked to a couple of good DPs [directors of photography] and got my stuff down, because I don’t want to weigh the crew down with someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing.
David is a great director. He came in and he did better than

any first-time director I have seen – stage, movies, TV or anything. He impressed everybody!

How about writing an episode?
I’ve got a couple of ideas. Most of the writing that I did was when I had a theatre company. I was involved in a lot of projects I’m proud of. But I’m so busy right now, most of my writing is really more writing music. When I get rested and feel creative and the sunshine is beautiful again, usually a song comes.

Speaking of sings, is it true that the band you’re in, Ghost of the Robot, and recurring Angel guest star Christian Kane’s band Kane tried to do something together recently?
Oh man, we tried! Kane was playing club Lingerie in Hollywood, but our band was busy in Sacramento. I would love to do something with Christian Kane – his CD sounds great and his voice is fabulous. His band is country rooted and my band is rooted in blues and punk, and it’s hard to reconcile the two styles, as far as making one sound. We could double-bill with each other – that would be really cool. But it would be fabulous if we could fuse something.

Angel has enjoyed some of its highest ratings in the US this season. Do you think Spike has helped take the show to a new level of popularity?
I think some of the ratings increase is down to the fact that they’ve made some really daring choices about Angel, having him make a decision [to