Over 25 years after she landed her signature role as Buffy Summers on Joss Whedon’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Sarah Michelle Gellar has complex feelings about her experience on the seven seasons of the iconic show.
In recent times, many of her co-stars have come forward with toxic workplace allegations against Joss, casting the series in a new light. Sarah herself released a short statement at the time, writing in 2021:
“While I am proud to have my name associated with Buffy Summers. I don’t want to be forever associated with the name Joss Whedon.”
In January 2022, after Joss broke his silence on the allegations, Sarah again took to social media to simply write:
“I can’t take back the past, but I can fight for the future.”
Now, in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the actress is opening up on how she doesn’t think she will ever tell the “full story” of the toxicity Joss created on the set of Buffy. Sarah, 45, stated:
“I’ll never tell my full story because I don’t get anything out of it. I’ve said all I’m going to say because nobody wins. Everybody loses.”
She went on to explain why she has chosen to stand by the legacy of the show – and not the creator. Sarah said:
“I’m not the only person facing this, and I hope the legacy hasn’t changed. I hope that it gives the success back to the people that put in all of the work. I will always be proud of Buffy. I will always be proud of what my castmates did, what I did.
Was it an ideal working situation? Absolutely not. But it’s OK to love Buffy for what we created because I think it’s pretty spectacular.”
Sarah’s husband of 21 years, Freddie Prinze Jr., had this to say:
“She had to deal with a lot of bulls— 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.”
Her Buffy co-stars Seth Green and Emma Caulfield shared Freddie’s sentiments. Emma said:
“It was obvious that Sarah lacked the support to be the leader she needed and wanted to be. There was a tremendous amount of resentment and animosity [toward her] from a certain someone — and I suppose now we can all guess who.”
And Seth shared about Buffy and Sarah:
“That show was just hard. We were working crazy hours, and a lot of things that got pushed weren’t necessarily safe or under the best conditions. Sarah was always the first one to say, ‘We agreed this was a 13-hour day and it’s hour 15 — we’ve got to wrap,’ or, ‘Hey, this shot doesn’t seem safe,’ when nobody else would stick up for the cast and crew.
I saw her get called a bitch, a diva, all these things that she’s not — just because she was taking the mantle of saying and doing the right thing.”
