LUKE PERRY LOOKS BACK
Buffy idol heads our way
By 1992, actor Luke Perry was at the height of his reign as a teen heartthrob (even if he was in his late-20s.)
As the brooding, endearingly damaged Dylan McKay on the teen soap Beverly Hills 90210, he was making many female hearts swoon.
But when it came time to choose his first non-90210 film role, he settled on a somewhat quirky choice. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a horror-comedy about a cheerleader who becomes vampire-killing warrior. It more or less flopped, but would later enter the pop-culture pantheon when screenwriter Joss Whedon turned into the cult-classic TV series of the same name five years later.
Perry, who played motorcycleriding outsider Pike, shot during the night while filming 90210 during the day.
He will be joining the original Buffy, Kristy Swanson, and former 90210 castmate Jason Priestley for various events at this year’s Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo from April 16 to 19 at Stampede Park.
Perry, 48, took some time to chat with the Calgary Herald about Buffy, 90210 (sort of ), fan expos and his love of shooting westerns in Alberta.
Q Have you been to Calgary before?
A Yeah, I have. A couple of times. It’s been a while since I’ve been there. A long time ago I shot a western out in Longview, Johnson County War, we did out there.
Q Do you do a lot of fan expos?
A Every other year I will try to do one or two. If you do them every other year, one or two, then you get to hear different questions, meet different people and take the temperature of the world. And that’s about as close to social media as I’m interested in getting.
Q Have you done a fan panel specifically about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the movie, before?
A What happens many times at these things there’ll be a number of folks there who have worked on Joss Whedon’s stuff. As you know they have coined the term the Whedonverse, so there have been times I’ve been on panels with other people discussing that and obviously they’ve brought up Buffy and we’ve talked about it.
Q Do you have fond memories of shooting the film?
A I had a good time with it. Paul Reubens ( better known as Pee-wee Herman, who was cast way against type as a vampire thug named Amilyn) and I are still great friends. You meet people along the way and he’s one of them. Kristy and I are still friendly. That’s cool. What I remember was just shooting all the nights. It’s a vampire movie so most of it takes place at night which means we’re shooting nights all the time. It was 30-some nights in a row, and I was shooting 90210 during the daytime. I was pretty exhausted by the end of it. I remember that, shooting nights on one thing and days on the other. It was just sleeping standing up.
Q When you chose Buffy the Vampire Slayer you were at the height of your 90210 popularity. Did it appeal to you because the film was so different from that show?
A That idea appealed to me. But the screenplay — stand-alone, on its own — made me laugh every page. I read the title and I laughed: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that’s funny. And it made me laugh on about every page ... there was something funny on every page and you could tell the person who had written this movie was just really, really smart.
Q Were you surprised when it was turned into a TV series?
A I think everybody was. It hadn’t been done much before to go that far back. The movie was a few years old at that time and didn’t exactly tear up the box office. But the studio had enough confidence in Joss’s vision and going forward it was an interesting choice on his part to say ‘I want to do that as a television series.’
Q Jason Priestley will be here for the comic Expo, so will you be doing any 90210 events?
A Who’s that?
Q Jason Priestley will be at ...
A I will ask you again, who is that?
Q He’s a Canadian ... and film director of some note ...
A He is a film director of some note. Doing very well for himself.
Q Will you be doing something together?
A Most likely. It’s hard to imagine us both being there and not doing something. So I’m looking forward to that. That will be a good time.
Q Obviously Dylan McKay is one of the characters you will be remembered for. What do you think of the character now after all these years later?
A I think he was the most threedimensional of all the characters. That’s not saying I did anything in particular, it was done on the page and I thought it was different than everything else and that appealed to me.
Q Didn’t you initially audition for another role?
A (Laughs) Yes, that is true. Well, I was supposed to audition for another part. I was supposed to read for Steve Sanders (played by Ian Ziering), and it was one of those things where I hadn’t seen the script at all and I just showed up at the place and they hand you the pages and look at them for a few minutes and then go in. I looked at it and said ‘Nah ... I don’t think I can do that.’ When it was my turn to go into the room, the casting lady was so nice and I said ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I can do this.’ We talked for a few minutes and she said ‘ You know what, I don’t think so either. You’re not the right one for this.’ We came to the agreement that it was not a part that we each thought I’d be good at playing. When Dylan was added later she said she remembered me. She was nice enough to let me have a conversation about it. It’s kind of a hard thing to say to someone you want a job from: ‘I don’t think I’ll be very good at this.’