Buffy's Warren Knows You Hate Him, And He's Okay With It

Every Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan knows that Warren was categorically, unequivocally the worst, and it turns out that the actor that plays him is pretty aware of that as well. In an interview with The A.V. Club, Adam Busch, who is also known for Men at Work and Léon: The Professional, talked about what it's like to be one of the most hated actors in the fandom and handed down some pretty questionable Buffy opinions.

According to Busch, he does get recognized quite often, although most people mistake him for an old classmate and not a TV super villain at first. "Then what happens is they realize what it is they know me from, and immediately, their face goes from excitement to anger and rage and a loathing," he said, noting that Buffy fans are "very comfortable" yelling at him for killing Amber Benson's Tara. "Whatever I'm working on, there will always be some question about, 'Do I feel bad for killing Tara?'"

"I think it's just because of the personal relationship that people have with the show that I feel like those lines are blurred when they see my face, and there's no hesitation to just let me know how they feel or say something like, 'Oh, you're awful,' or, 'You're terrible,'" he added. "It's caused me to put a bit of a guard up."

Busch said that he thinks Warren is the best big bad because he isn't a demon, meaning that he ins't just being evil for the sake of being evil. However, he does think that fan hatred of Warren is "justified," saying that the character was more grounded in reality than other Buffy big bads, making him more relatable and thus more personal to the audience. "I feel like the things that Warren had to deal with are universal," he said. "He just handled them so wrong every time."

Busch still spoke highly of his Buffy experience, despite the troubles it has gotten him in after the show. "I got to do more on that show than anyone ever gets to do in a career," he said. "To get to go from a good guy to a bad guy, to do comedy, to do serious, to do science fantasy, and then something grounded in a topic that's even more relevant now than it was then."

There was one experience that Busch didn't get to have during his time on the show that he wished he did. The actor said that he, along with Tom Lenk and Danny Strong, lobbied hard to be a part of the show's musical episode "Once More With Feeling," but, despite the would-be Trio boy band performing for writer/producer Marti Noxon, they didn't make the cut. "Everyone was having so much fun and singing and dancing, and we weren't in it because they had been working on it for so many months before we were even there that wasn't part of the storyline," he said. "We really wanted to be in the musical, really really bad."

For a man who is already hated in the Buffy fandom, Busch didn't hesitate to espouse some opinions that fans of the show may take a bit of upset with. When asked about season six, which many fans called too dark for the show, Busch said that it was just the writers "writing themselves" and trying to take "different people's perspectives on the same story." "They were, as far as I can tell— Drew Greenberg and all of them— were writing if not themselves then the people they know and the things they knew from feeling like an outsider," he said. "And that is what you want them to do."

Busch also defended another of the show's most hated characters, Buffy's magical younger sister Dawn. "I don't think any controversy is justified," he said. "Controversy just means people give a sh–, which is great. It's not going to be this show you would write; otherwise, you would have written it." Still, Busch picks Spike over Angel, so we're willing to forgive him for his other odd opinions.

If you're a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, see which one of the show's classic moments was actually improvised and which Buffy episode no one wants to watch more than once.