Summers Day by Tara Dilullo
While Buffy the Vampire Slayer may be dead and buried (for the time being, at least), it’s multi-talented star, Sarah Michelle Gellar, is live and kicking and in more demand than ever. Appearing at the recent San Diego Comic Con to promote her new movie, The Grudge, Buffy Magazine caught up with the actress herself to discuss her time on Buffy, the future of the franchise, her new projects and being the ultimate girl power icon. Will Sarah ever pick up her stake again? Read on to find out…

She saved the world… a lot – and in seven years, Buffy the Vampire Slayer became a pioneer character in the television landscape, one that helped change the face of female empowerment in the media forever. In a medium where women were often just seen as mums, girlfriends or daughters, Buffy stood apart as a strong heroine that battled demons, both literal and figurative, right along with her all too-human flaws and frailties. In seven years, audiences watched the teenage, sweet-faced Buffy evolve into a woman, bravely facing the hardships of her calling and the brutalities of life. At the same time, Sarah Michelle Gellar also grew up and into her own, as an actress who made an indelible mark in a genre often exclusively reserved for men. While Buffy is an icon throughout the world now, Sarah is just enjoying a life known not as the Slayer, but just simply as ‘Sassy’ – the nickname she’s had for years. Laughing as she reflects on the origin of the moniker, she shares, “My make-up artist called me that one day and it just stuck. I’ve been through a few because I had four Sarahs in my class when I was growing up, so you get stuck with quite a few. I was ‘Spenser’ for a while. It was so stupid. I missed school a lot for work when I was younger, and one day I was out for an episode of Spenser for Hire, and my math teacher made a big production out of it, ‘Oh I guess she’s absent for doing Spenser for Hire!’ When I got back, they kept calling me that and it stuck.”
    Spenser, Sassy, Slayer, whatever the name, Sarah is fine with them all since they all reflect various times of her young, but incredibly busy, life. Acting since she was four years old, Sarah has been in the fast track of her career for as long as she can remember. Commercials, films and television parts led to her Emmy-winning role on the soap opera All My Children, which in turn led to Buffy in 1997. While dusting vamps, she managed to squeeze in seven films and got married to fellow actor, Freddie Prinze Jr., in 2002. In 2003, after 144 episodes of Buffy, Sarah decided to call it quits on the series so she could start a new chapter of her career. Yet the lessons she learned from the show and the character are always a part of her now. “Buffy was an inspiration,” she says. “For me to play her teen years and early 20s, it’s so hard, especially being a female. One of the things that I loved about Buffy was that she was okay with who she was, and to me that’s the most important lesson you can ever learn. It’s okay if you’re not the smartest, the brightest, the most talented or the prettiest, but the most important thing is to be confident with who you are – and I know I certainly take a lot from that.”
    Now, after more than a year away from the show, Sarah admits that the Buffy experience still seems like a whirlwind. “I think the first four years of that show were such a cocoon for me. Everything was new. I was 18 years old and I worked non-stop. I didn’t know how to say no or take a break or anything. I would go to work at 6am Monday morning and wouldn’t wrap until 6am Saturday morning, and then go back in at 6am on Monday. I was in such a tunnel that I literally remember saying to someone, ‘I hope people actually watch the show,’ not even realising how popular it was. And now that I actually have a life and I actually see the outside and I have days off, I more aware of how many people watch Buffy and how widespread it is.”
    While the decision to end the show was a joint one made by series creator Joss Whedon and herself, Sarah admits that it was, to an extent, difficult to walk away from the series after so long. “I think the first thing I felt was just sort of deep sadness. It was a huge part of my life. The only part of my adult life that I had known was being on that show, so leaving it was incredibly sad and emotional. At the same time, it was the next step and, for me, it was a transition – leaving something safe and trying out something new. Now for me, it’s a little bit of freedom. I based all my movie choices for the last eight years on a two-and-a-half-month hiatus, and that basically sort of determined what I did. And now, I get to sit back a little bit and do things because they really interest me or because I think I can learn something or bring something to it, rather than because they can shoot in my two-month hiatus,” she smiles.

Immediately after Buffy, Sarah and Freddie Prince Jr. flew to Vancouver to shoot Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, and this winter, she chose to return to her genre roots in the film The Grudge, which is an American remake of the Japanese horror hit, Ju-On. “I had come home from Vancouver and was a little disillusioned, not reading anything that, to me, was really interesting and worthwhile. I got a phone call on a Thursday night from a friend of mine and she said, ‘I’ve read this script, and you’re gonna love it, but here’s the deal. You have to read it and watch this film (Ju-On) tonight, because you’ve got to meet with them tomorrow, because you’ve been gone for so long.’ So, mistake number one was watching the original at 10 o’clock at night in a house by myself. Not one of my brighter moments,” she laughs. “But I just loved it! I loved the shots. I loved the style. I loved the story. I went in and met with them the next day and then I stalked executive producer Sam Raimi (Spider-Man 2) for some time – the restraining order should be lifted anytime soon, and here I am!” she jokes.
    Directed by the original Ju-On director, Takashi Shimizu in Japan, The Grudge was comprised of an all-Japanese crew merged with an all-American cast, which for Sarah was a big incentive to sign onto the project. “I think for me it was just the excitement of being part of something that’s a first. You know, I was a part of a television show that was incredibly ground-breaking, and that’s really hard, if not impossible, to top. So being able to be part of the first Japanese film ever remade for American audiences – with the original Japanese director – is truly a once in a lifetime chance, and I grabbed it and it’s now part of history.”
    Sarah also travelled around the world to live and work in Japan for the weeks of production on the film. While she didn’t speak the language, she was able to adapt rather quickly and immerse herself into the culture. “I loved it,” she enthuses. “I loved every aspect of it, both personally and professionally. It was like, ‘Filmmaking 101’. Everything you learned, throw it out the window and learn their customs. It’s a culture so steeped in tradition and history and respect. I just hope I didn’t embarrass the Americans out there. It’s always hard to be a tourist in a place where you don’t speak the language. In my personal travelling experience, it was the most welcomed I’ve ever felt. Everybody was so helpful. We would go to restaurants where nobody spoke English and we’d be butchering their language to oblivion, and instead of being angry at us they were so kind and very patient with us.”
    To hear Sarah tell it, she had more trouble when it came to shedding her years as a hero to take on the persona of her character, Karen, who is a victim in the film. “You know, for me, in a sense it was actually harder to look like you don’t know what you’re doing. I kept thinking, ‘Oh, it’s going to be a breeze, I’m going to walk through it.’ I remember one scene in particular, which was just a running scene and I was just racing to get somewhere and they kept making me do the scene over and over and over again. I was getting really exhausted, and finally I was like, ‘What am I doing wrong?’ They said, ‘You’re running like a superhero. If you could just like, flap your arms a little more,’” she laughs. “And they thought the more they kept making me do it, the more tired I would get and the lamer I would look!
    “It was definitely physical,” she continues. “I think one of the things about it too is that Japanese film-making is a very different sort of style. In American films, we cheat a lot. You know, I don’t really lift those guys. I’ve got wires, I’ve got stuntmen, I’ve got all sorts of help. In Japanese films, you just kind of do it. They say, ‘Go through the glass window,’ and it’s like ‘How do I get through that’ And they say ‘Well, break it first… and then go.’ It was very eye-opening. I’m not the lazy actor I once was, so in some instances like that, it was actually harder than Buffy.”
    Now back in Los Angeles, Sarah is gearing up to start a new project in the fall, directed by Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko) and called Southland Tales. The film is a quirky musical, to which Sarah is no stranger after ‘Once More, With Feeling’. She’s also looking for her next challenge, which isn’t always so easy to find in Hollywood. “I’m going to play Sarah Michelle the superhero,” she teases. “I’d actually love to play an original superhero. Buffy, when I came into it, was an existing character. Daphne was an existing character in Scooby-Doo. And in a sense, my character in The Grudge is also an existing character. I think if I was to be like a true superhero, I’d love to create one so that all of the comics and the videogames that came after were based on an original concept that I got to shape and create, versus somebody else’s.
    “Buffy spoiled me in a sense,” Sarah continues, talking about selecting new roles. “It’s still hard to find really strong female characters where women can really be active. I just like doing things where women have a say and where women get to be a powerful character, even if they’re the victim, but where they really have three-dimensional female characters.” Asked if she would ever return to television, she pauses for a moment. “It would be so hard to top the experience that I had, so it would have to be something after a lot of time and something that was entirely different. I would never try to recreate something that was pretty much as perfect for me as Buffy was. I don’t know. It would have to hit me, and I’d have to say ‘That’s the one!’ I try not to make distinctions between film, television and theatre. I love to be a part of the entertainment industry, in whatever form that takes. I’ll be happy just as long as I can continue to do what I love, so I’m going where the wind takes me.”
    Looking back at her time spent on Buffy, Sarah muses more about what she gained. “I hope I got better. I hope in eight years, I learned something. Everything is preparation for everything you do. You know, hopefully, you take and you learn. I got the chance to work with some pretty amazing, talented actors who I stole plenty from,” she smiles. She even admits that she could see her going back to the role someday. “I don’t know what’s going to happen with a movie. I know there’s been a lot of talk about it. Part of the reason the movie didn’t work before was because Buffy was a story that, in my opinion, needed to be told over a period of time. It worked better when you spent time with it and it wasn’t over so neatly. I wish the finale had been two hours. ‘Chosen’ didn’t seem long enough for me. So I would be really fearful of putting all of that heart and all of those characters into two hours because I know that at some point there would be a let-down. But if someone came to me and it looked like the perfect two hours that I thought wouldn’t disappoint, then it would definitely be something that I would consider doing.”
    Coming full circle, Sarah looks happy and content with where she is now in her life. With the new opportunities she sought now happening and a bright future ahead of her, she looks like a woman who has learned a lot, but knows there is so much more to accomplish and understand. With a smile, she pauses before leaving a last grateful message in particular to the fans that have supported her and the show so tirelessly for almost a decade. “Thank you all for seven amazing years. Buffy is a show that I know in my heart wouldn’t have existed without the support of the fans, as well as the magazines and the Internet. I look at it as ‘the little show that could’ and we made it for you, so thank you.”