Sarah Michelle Gellar is detailing what went wrong with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot, and says one executive is to blame for the show not moving forward.
The actress was set to reprise her iconic role in a new version of the show from Oscar-winning Hamnet director Chloé Zhao that was being made for Hulu and Searchlight Television and titled Buffy: New Sunnydale. On Friday, Gellar shared the news that the project was not moving forward, citing Hulu for the decision.
Now in a new interview with People, Gellar criticized the decision to cancel the reboot, and also the timing of the decision, which came on the eve of Zhao going to the Oscars (where Zhao had received two nominations).
Without naming names, Gellar says one executive who made a point of saying he never liked Buffy scrapped the show.
“We had an executive on our show who was not only not a fan of the original, but was proud to constantly remind us that he had never seen the entirety of the series and how it wasn’t for him,” she said. “That’s very hard when you’re taking a property that is as beloved as Buffy, not just to the world, but to me and Chloé. So that tells you the uphill battle that we had been fighting since day one, when your executive is literally proud to tell you that he didn’t watch it.”
Gellar says she spoke to Zhao about the decision. “Chloé and I are feeling the same things. Disappointment. We don’t want to let the fans down. That hurts. Saddened at how it was handled and when it was handled. But I just said to Chloé, and I was very specific, I said, ‘Sunday night, you put that crown on and you walk that red carpet and you take in all that love for what you worked for and forget the other stuff.’ It’s important to me that this doesn’t take away from what we achieved and what she’s achieved. And there’s always so [much] more to do.”
The actress added that when she was on the set, she thought the new version was really working, including a new Slayer played by Ryan Kiera Armstrong.
“Let me tell you, nobody saw this coming,” she said. “The dialogue flew off the tongue. When I was on set, it was craziness. It was like, ‘Oh, we’re here. We’re doing this.’ I loved the duality that we had this new, younger slayer who was where Buffy was when the show started, and then we would pick up with where Buffy was now … And I’d like to use this moment also to say that Ryan Kiera Armstrong is a superstar. I’m gutted that no one will see her as a slayer.”
A representative for Hulu had no immediate comment, though a statement obtained by People noted that because Disney owns the Buffy IP, the project cannot be shopped elsewhere.
Gellar stars in the horror sequel Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, which opens this weekend.
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