On the new USA Network drama “Necessary Roughness,” Marc Blucas costars as Matthew Donnally, a former college basketball player working as the athletic trainer for a fictional professional football team.
The role is tailor-made for the 39-year-old actor, who was a standout college guard for four years at Wake Forest, playing 89 games and throwing passes to future NBA Hall of Famer Tim Duncan.
But while the strong ratings for “Necessary Roughness” -- in which Blucas romances “Rescue Me” star Callie Thorne's Dani, a newly divorced sports psychotherapist -- suggest that the series may become Blucas’ calling card, he knows that, to a certain demographic, he'll always be Riley Finn, Buffy’s peppy paramour during the fourth and fifth seasons of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
Blucas called us from his home in the Pennsylvania countryside to discuss the two wildly different roles.
Strangely, I have been re-watching “Buffy” and had just gotten into season four when “Necessary Roughness” began. Perfect timing, huh?
I’m surprised you still want to talk to me. Back then, I was so green. I was a business major in college and had no concept of what I was doing. Today, I can’t watch “Buffy” because I just cringe. I suck so bad in it. I got really lucky to have the opportunity, but I genuinely had no clue what I was doing.
Playing Buffy’s first post-Angel boyfriend probably didn’t help. Did you get a lot of hate mail?
I have more people hating me from “Buffy” than I do liking me. That’s the truth. But that’s fan-based, due to the story line. It’s just like, you have two people that are tortured lovers and who are supposed to be together forever. And then Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky comes in and is like, “I’m her new boyfriend!” There’s no amount of positioning Joss [Whedon] could have done. It could have been Brad Pitt in that role and I don’t think he would have been universally liked. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s just me they hated.
Well, Team Riley sprung up when you punched that douche-y Parker square in the face for bragging about his conquest of Buffy.
They did everything they could to set it up in a way that I could potentially be likable. And that was one of the moments. Ah! And when things are bad, Riley can fly in and deck ’em!
It’s all good now, though, right?
Now that it’s been ten years, the fans have obviously lightened up. But early on, man … I was even warned. Joss and everybody said, “Don’t go online -- they're going to hate you.” I was like, “Okay.” So of course I got online after my first episode and I’m like, “Oh my god, they hate me.” And they’re like, “Yeah, we told you they’re going to hate you.”
