Before and after MeToo

Before there was streaming and other platforms available to actors, there was network television. It was on this platform where Buffy the Vampire Slayer earned millions of fans as they got to watch a young Sarah Michelle Gellar in the titular role for seven seasons, kicking demons or vampires to hell. She was also navigating her way as a teenager to adulthood and saving the world, dying, not dying, fighting vampires, falling in love with vampire(s) in what was not only a campy horror school series but a cultural landmark for television. Its success even led to a discipline in which students studied its plots and themes. Buffy, after all, also had thrilling supporting characters featuring a variety of women and at least one fluid character.

What many of us didn’t know at the time is that the show’s creator, Joss Whedon (who found juicy projects in films like Avengers and in the Marvel Cinematic Universe after Buffy ended) was a creep. Years after the show, Sarah carefully threw her support behind the women who called out Whedon for allegations of abusive behaviour that he has (duh!) denied.

Her husband, Freddie Prinze Jr, however, told The Hollywood Reporter: “She had to deal with a lot of bullsh*t on that show for all seven years it was on. The stuff they pressed upon her, without any credit or real salary, while she was often the only one doing 15-hour days … yet she was still able to get the message of that character out every single week and do it with pride and do it professionally.”

For years, Sarah was busy raising a family with actor Freddie Prinze Jr. after Buffy as there was no option but network television, which required as many as 22 episode per show with actors often shooting for 12 hours a day. Sarah bowed out of the television game. Until now.

Once more…
with Love

At 45, Sarah Michelle Gellar is not only returning with shebang as an actor but also as a producer. In her cover interview with The Hollywood Reporter, where the actor is wearing Alberta Ferretti dress and blazer, Zaffori boots and Vhernier ring, she spoke of certain measures in place, apart from a common norm now such as an intimacy coordinator.

Distributing her phone number to the young co-stars in the new series, Wolf Pack, she has given assurance that any situation would be discreetly handled. “I hope that I’ve set up an infrastructure, a safety net for these actors that I didn’t have,” she told THR. “My generation just didn’t have that.”

Rooting for Sarah Michelle Gellar

Sarah Michelle Gellar is also one of the executive producers of Wolf Pack. She’s worked with Freddie Prinze Jr on a number of occasions. The two are happily married since over two decades and made a rare red-carpet appearance together for the premiere of the supernatural series, Wolf Pack.

Reunions of the good kind

At the premiere of Wolf Pack, Sarah Michelle Gellar reunited with her Buffy the Vampire Slayer co-star James Marsters, who essayed a vampire called Spike. We’re still wondering, after all these years, just why these two couldn’t work things out (in the series) and come together after they saved the world, again. I mean if you can raise the dead, and save the world, multiple times, surely this should’ve been a snap for the writers, creators. But it is nice to see Marsters come out for the premiere. Sarah Michelle Gellar and James Marsters did create sizzle as they appeared on the red carpet after years.