Sarah Michelle Gellar says being a young woman in the entertainment industry”was not easy,” but “victim blaming and shaming” keeps her from opening upabout those stories publicly.
the Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum, 45, has resumed acting after a multi-yearbreak in the wake of The Crazy Ones co-star Robin Williams’s death to bepresent for her family with Freddie Prinze Jr. She has a role playing aheadmaster in the high school dark comedy Do Revenge, out now on Netflix,and is in production acting in and executive producing Teen Wolf spin-off_wolf pack_ for Paramount+. She tells the New York Times she feels she’s nowin her “adult career” — and it’s worlds away from where she started.
As for where she started — and what she experienced along the way — it’s beena journey. Asked by the outlet if she had generally good experiences as a teenand young woman in the industry, Gellar — who won a Daytime Emmy at age 18 for_All My Children_ — replied, “No. It was really hard. There weren’t greatfemale roles when I came up. It was the girlfriend role, the wife role. That’swhy Buffy was so spectacular, because she really had something to do, and thenwe had I Know What You Did , where it was the women figuring things out.That was all a new turn of events.”
That was just one part. The other was inappropriate behavior behind thescenes, which she spoke about but made clear she wasn’t going to detail.
“There’s the other side of being a young girl in the business,” she continued.”Growing up in New York, I had a little bit of street sense going into it,which is helpful. But no, it was not easy. And I’ve had my fair share ofexperiences, I have just chosen not — I don ‘t win by telling my stories,emotionally, for me. I look at people that tell their stories, and I’m soimpressed. in here.”
Sarah Michelle Gellar was just 18 when she won a Daytime Emmy for her role onAll My Children in 1995. (Photo: Getty Images)
Of course, while buffy – which ran from 1997 to 2003 — was spectacular asfar as her role, we now know that some of the women on the set felt threatenedby show creator and EP Joss Whedon. Whedon was accused of on-set misconduct byalums Charisma Carpenter, Michelle Trachtenberg and Amber Benson in 2021.Gellar stood with the victims at the time saying she was “proud of them forspeaking out.”
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Whedon broke his silence about the buffy set claims — and other misconductallegations — earlier this year. Two days later, Gellar shared a social mediapost that said, “I can’t take back the past, but I can fight for the future.”in her NYT interview, she was asked if she wanted to elaborate and she spokeabout her efforts to create “a safe space” for young performers on the setsshe is on in the wake of what she’s learned and experienced.
“Especially now, I go into my projects as an executive producer,” she said. “wolf pack , for example. I have these two young girls and two young boys[acting] on it. I have made it very clear from Day 1 that if there are thingsthe production wants to talk to them about, I want them to go through me.Because I’ve been there. And I want [the performers] to always have a safespace.”
Gellar also spoke about marriage to Prinze with the couple recently markingtheir 20th wedding anniversary.
“I think we live in a very disposable world right now,” she said. “When I wasa kid, if your TV broke, you carried it to the repair shop and got your TVfixed. Now, if your TV breaks, you go get a new one. I think sometimes we lookat relationships like that. You have to be willing to put in the work. That’ssomething we’ve always been willing to do. You have ups and downs, but youdon’t walk away.”
Sarah Michelle Gellar brought her rarely seen daughter, Charlotte GracePrinze, 12, to an LA screening of Netlfix’s Do Revenge on Sept. 14, 2022.(Photo: Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for Netflix)
Gellar also talked about her role in Do Revenge and how her character in thecomedy film is modeled after her famous Cruel Intentions character, KathrynMerteuil. While she was the young star in so many aughts projects, she’s theadvice-giving headmaster for the teens played by stars including Camila Mendesand Maya Hawke.
“I wouldn’t want to be 17 again for anything,” Gellar said. “Thirty two maybe,but not 17.”
This week, Gellar brought her 12-year-old daughter Charlotte Prinze with herto a Hollywood screening of the film. The couple’s children — also includingson Rocky, 10 — are rarely seen, with Gellar typically hiding their faces whenshe posts photos of them on social media.