ATTEN-HUT! AS SUPER-SOLDIERS IN THE INITIATIVE, BAILEY CHASE AND LEONARD ROBERTS DISCOVERED THE HARD WAY THAT IT'S HOT EASY BEIN' GREEN

BY MATT SPRINGER     

The life of a soldier in the Initiative is pretty rough. For one thing, there's all the drunken frat parties necessary to maintain their cover as a mild-mannered group of college guys. Then there's all the buxom young co-eds populating those parties-no flag-loving military man would want to make them feel anything less than completely welcome.  And of course, there's the pressure of filling up their exhausting days

Playing Nerf basketball in their dorm rooms, a challenge to Special Agent Forrest.  "I cannot play basketball-it's crazy," confesses Leonard Roberts, who ironically got his big break appearing in Spike Lee's basketball film He Got Game. "We had an episode where Marc [Blucas] and I were shooting Nerf ball in his frat room.  Marc's supposed to shoot and miss, then Leonard's supposed to shoot and make it.  Marc shoots, sinks it-Leonard shoots, bricks it.   It was sad.   Finally I was just popping them off.  I think two out of twelve made it.  It was a humbling experience."

Life in the Initiative isn't all fun and games, though. There's the more serious issue of injuries to consider, whether at the hand of vicious demons or your Frisbee hurling cornpadres. "The first day of shooting that Leonard and I worked, Marc and I were throwing a Frisbee across the room," Chase recalls. "Marc and I were throwing it back and forth, and Leonard was sitting on the couch with his back to me, talking to Marc the whole time. There were a couple of times when Leonard got popped in the back of the head with the Frisbee. We'd nail it-we'd always be totally flawless on the rehearsals, and then I'd pop Leonard."

So they're not the most coordinated pair of hunks in the world. That's why it's "acting," and not "reality." Whatever their athletic abilities, Roberts and Chase both proved throughout the season that they were up to the challenge of portraying two dedicated soldiers caught between their devotion to duty and the questionable practices of the Initiative.

As Forrest, Roberts was the budding career soldier, refusing to believe the speculations about the true nature of the Initiative. He remained with the top-secret organization through Dr. Maggie Walsh's betrayal, bitterly disagreeing with Riley's choice to betray his Army roots and ally himself with the Slayer. After his untimely death at Adam's hands, he again returned to the Initiative, this time to become a twisted demon-humanoid creation devoted to evil.

Forrest was definitely a military man through and through, placing loyalty to his duty over all other concerns. It's not surprising, then, that Roberts was able to convincingly convey that loyalty, considering that he himself at one time contemplated a military career.

"My morn was a Marine," explains Roberts. "We talked about it for a while, that I'd go into the Marine Corps and go to college on the G.I. Bill. Then I was in high school right around the time of the Gulf War. There's nothing like a war to really heighten your perspective of what you really want to do in the Armed Forces. I thought maybe I should think it through a little bit, try to go to college, and my morn respected that."

In contrast to Forrest, Graham was able to embrace some of Riley's doubts regarding the Initiative. He had a far more open mind to conflicting ideas about the top-secret organization, and thus never viewed Buffy as the threat she seemed to pose to other Initiative operatives. If anything, his loyalty seemed more informed than Forrest's, and he valiantly fought in the final stand against the demon army raised by Adam.

You always read about stars of military films being sent to boot camp for a week to "prepare" for their role. But none of the Initiative's operatives ever had a chance to attend boot camp, or even screen Full Metal Jacket. It was up to each of them to develop their own soldier persona.

"For the audition, we didn't get a script for the episode, so we didn't know it was going to be military," says Chase. "The character breakdown that I got was that Graham was a 'muscley mountain of a college senior,' friend of Riley. When I read that, I was cracking up. I didn't research or watch any army films or anything, Joss was very hands-on in the first episode that Leonard and I worked on, and if anything, he wanted us to shy away from the very structured, military regimen. When we weren't in our uniforms, we tried to be pretty normal guys."

It's probably pretty hard to be "normal guys" when you live above a cavernous base full of cool doohickeys and gadgets.  "We had this running joke, me and the other guys," says Roberts. "When we saw how elaborate the entire Initiative set was, it was like Bruce Wayne mode, and then Batman mode. We'd go down the elevator, and everyone talked a little deeper and looted a bit more stern."

The Initiative's operatives were hardly average military guys, which required a greater leap of imagination than suiting up for a World War II drama. "To really appreciate the show, you need to step into the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and just accept that reality," explains Chase. "Once you do that, it's great, because the writing's strong and everybody does their own job very well. That's what makes the show fun."

Like so many other supporting players who become fixtures on the series, the pair originally auditioned for just a single appearance on Buffy. After catching a look at the other candidates for the role, Roberts wasn't even sure he had a shot at the part. "I got up to the waiting room, and there were a couple of big guys," he recalls. "I was thinking, 'Okay-they're looking for William Perry-type cats.' I read for Graham, and they said, 'Why don't you sit tight for a bit and look at the Forrest stuff?' So I went over to Best Buy to get a new tape deck, and I got the call to say that I had it.  Who'd've thought?"

Before signing on with the Initiative, Roberts' most high profile exposure came from his role in He Got Came, which arrived just as the actor was facing that most dreaded among actor's nightmares: waiting tables. "I had these running jokes with my agent at the time," says Roberts. "I'd call him up and say, 'Did Stephen Spielberg call? Did Spike Lee call?'.  I was just out of college and I was just about to take my first waiter job.  He said, 'Well, you're going to be missing auditions.  You've got a McDonald's industrial audition at three o'clock, and… oh yeah, did I tell you Spike Lee called?' I was like, 'Now is not the time. Don't play with me like this.' Twelve hours later. I'm on a plane to New York. There I was, my first day of work, sitting between Spike Lee and Denzel Washington. I was overwhelmed."

Chase's career path nearly took him in a completely different direction; after attending Duke on a football scholarship, his dreams leaned more toward pro sports than Hollywood. "I played sports in college, and then I moved out to L.A. pretty much on a whim," he explains. "When it dawned on me that I wasn't gonna play in the NFL, my dream was to try acting. I just moved out here and got into a class, and eventually, I just started getting work."

Now Forrest has joined the ranks of those dearly departed from the Buffyverse. He's probably playing Nerf ball in some otherworldly realm with Jenny Calendar and Larry the gay football player while Graham is somewhere in Belize. On the other hand, they could just as easily find themselves miraculously back in Sunnydale. If there's one thing that we know for certain about Sunnydale, it's that anything is possible.