Master (Buffy The Vampire Slayer) - Creation and Casting

Creation and Casting

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was originally conceived for a 1992 feature film that pitched Buffy against a similar villain controlling vampires below Los Angeles. Disappointed by the final film, screenwriter and series creator Joss Whedon reworked his script into a television series more in line with his original vision. He and the staff writers employ fantasy and horror elements in the series to represent real-life conflicts for the adolescent characters, while frequently undercutting the horror aspect of the show with comedy. Sunnydale High School is situated atop a portal to hell called a Hellmouth, which Whedon uses to symbolize the high-school-as-hell experience. Pragmatically, Whedon admitted that placing the high school on a Hellmouth allows the writers to confront the main characters with an endless array of evil creatures.

Veteran character actor Mark Metcalf appeared in heavy prosthetic make-up for the role of the Master, belying his iconic performance in the film National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) as Douglas C. Neidermeyer, a strident rule-following ROTC officer (and the associated role in Twisted Sister's "We're Not Going to Take It" music video). In 2011, Metcalf acknowledged that his Animal House role would probably live much longer than he, but also recognized his roles on Seinfeld—where he plays a similarly named character called "Maestro"—and Buffy the Vampire Slayer as his favorites. Many actors auditioned for the part, but Metcalf, according to Whedon, played it with more complexity, bringing a "sly and kind of urbane" sensitivity and a charm to the villainy of the character.