No crosses or stakes were present—not even the Slayer Scythe. Instead, Sarah Michelle Gellar’s dressing room featured items of mundane, not-vampire-slayer sensibilities: a craft services table with white roses, raw honey, and a Diptyque Baies candle.
Standing in the wing, waiting for our conversation, I observed her lightning-fast speaking cadence—bubbly and dripping with sweetness, like the notes of blackcurrant that filled the Brooklyn film studio. The leather and crop top-laden Y2K style she shaped—ironically, stakes never caught on—was swapped for a practical, ribbed-knit black cardigan, charcoal trousers, and a pair of white slippers most often seen in five-star hotels or Emirates flights. She is aspirationally cool, dressed comfortably for a day of press, celebrating her global ambassadorship with Olay, where she is the face of their newly reformulated Regenerist Micro-Sculpting Cream. It’s also worth noting that, at five feet four inches, she is diminutive enough (at least to this 5’11” reporter) to evoke the same level of cute aggression as a teacup Chihuahua or a Precious Moments figurine.
Our conversation began with an admission that would strike a pang of dread into the hearts of fact-checkers. According to an online encyclopedia of dubious reporting, we are living in Gellar’s “resurgence (2021–present),” following “hiatus and sporadic roles (2011–2020),” as listed under her biblical-length career summary. She is a cookbook author, a mom, a star of film and television, and an MTV Movie Award winner for Best Kiss, alongside her Cruel Intentions co-star, Selma Blair.
“I call it my second act,” she says of her current state. “I think that I’ve been working for such a long time, and I had these two young kids, and then after we lost Robin Williams, I just needed a break.” (Gellar starred alongside Williams on the CBS sitcom, The Crazy Ones, which became Williams’ last television role before his passing in 2014.) She returned in 2022, appearing in the Netflix comedy-thriller Do Revenge, after buckling to the age-old adage that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Or, when the cult of SMG screams “more,” you must meet their demand. “I realized how much I missed [acting],” she says.
Of her return, though, she says her approach to work has shifted. After all, she’s a mother of two and started working as an actor before many of her peers could read books without pictures. “My priorities for now are doing things that are fun, that feed my soul,” she says, thoughtfully selecting each word, as if scrutinizing what does feed her soul. “I don’t feel this need to prove I’ve accomplished more in my life than I probably ever thought I would accomplish.”
The list of those accomplishments is expansive and, at times, absurd. For example, when Gellar was five, she was caught in the crosshairs of a lawsuit between Burger King and McDonald’s after starring in a commercial for the former. Accordingly, she was banned from McDonald’s as a child. While I didn’t have the time to dive headfirst into that ball pit of drama, I had plenty of time to inspect her most noteworthy role—the crown jewel of the Sarah Michelle Gellar archive: Scooby Doo. Kidding. I am, of course, referencing Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
More than 22 years after the Everygirl-with-a-stake Buffy destroyed the Hellmouth, r/buffy on Reddit is still ablaze (with 6,700 active members at the time of reporting) and “Buffy Studies” college courses that examine media, feminism, and culture. Of this impact, I shared that I, too, took a Buffy class over the summer between my junior and senior year of high school, and that my best friend’s ringtone has been the Buffy theme song since I’ve known her. “It’s only with time that you can really appreciate the effect that [Buffy] had,” she says, noting a degree of doubt during the early Buffy years—uncertainty that it could withstand the test of time. “But the fact that young kids today are finding that show and finding that it’s speaking to them, that’s when you know it really did something important and you were part of something important.”
