James Marsters was at this weekends ‘Rift’ convention and of course divulged some info about Dragonball. Thanks to Craigdbfan for spotting this!
“PS I Love You – thinks he was boring. He went along planning to be a good boy, and it ended up boring. Has decided now he’s actually hired to be an arsehole. To make his character interesting. So with this new attitude on, he got hired to do Dragonball Z.
They started off with this total age makeup for his character, really old and decrepit and stuff. Then they decided that wouldn’t be pretty enough to sell. But JM thought it was essential to his character. It was his character’s whole motivation. He got locked up for ages, he got old, when he got out and saw himself for the first time he decided to get even. So he went to the makeup artist with a picture of the original old guy test makeup and told him to make it like that. Makeup artist said the producers were pretty sure, but JM said if the producers cared they’d be there. They weren’t even in the same country. So.
He has a lot of stunt work in the new film. When asked what the difference was between TV and film he said for TV he had a stuntman. So for the film he’s getting thrown off things and blown up and kicked in the face. One time his character is getting shot at by another character, power blasts, and he ducks and it blows up the rock behind him. So they got set up to blow it up and JM asked, said the quicker he stands up the cooler it will be. So he ducks, they blow it up, he stands up right away when there’s still chunks flying. The camera people, taken somewhat by surprise, leap to do their jobs. One person gets hit by something, and JM still feels guilty about that. (Be asks who was running stunts and how is it possible an actor can mess up the timing/safety issues?) (… what country were they filming in?) But JM’s logic is his character isn’t bothered by some rock blowing up. He only has to dodge his enemies’ blasts. Rock isn’t a problem for the supervillain.”