Slay Anything
Buffy's alter ego, Sarah Michelle Gellar, gives YM a close-up of life on the set--and spills about guys, Hollywood pals, and her brand-new movie career
BY JENNIFER GRAHAM; INTERVIEW BY JEANNE WOLF
Five years ago, when Sarah Michelle Gellar was on the soap All My Children, her makeup dude, Norman, told her she looked just like the girl in that weird Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie. So she took to reciting one of Buffy's lines---"Excuse much, rude or anything?"---when she saw him. "He'd always crack up," she says. "It became a running joke."
Today, she laughs about it on the set of TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a smarter, cooler version of the flick. "I called Norman when I nabbed this role," says Sarah, who scored the lead in 1996. "He didn't believe it!"
Neither can she sometimes. After all, Buffy is the smoothest high school heroine in prime time. She has the killer looks of 90210's Kelly, the brains of MTV's Daria, and a knack for saving her school from mass destruction. And she does it all with style to spare.
Between homework and bed, 16-year-old Buffy stabs vampires, pummels evil robots, and guts creepy ghouls that emerge from the Hellmouth, the evil underworld upon which her school is built. Would Party of Five's Julia take down a devil-worshiping beast? Would she drop the comment: "if you're so amped about hell, why don't you go there?" Not quite.
Since Sarah--who's 20 in real life--has been tagged an expert in all things sinister, she's won roles in two horror flicks: the recent I Know What You Did Last Summer and this winter's Scream 2. How did she feel about her big screen debut in terror mode? Stoked. Sharacters grappling with the dark side are likely to be complex, she explains. "Right now, some of the best work for girls my age is in theis genre."
sarah's say anything moments
Just 'cause you're a TV star doesn't mean you don't have embarrassing episodes
"I had plans to go out with the Buffy cast one night after we finished taping. The night before, I laid out a slipdres, a slip to go under it, and my knee-high boots. The next morning, I got dressed and hopped in my car with the top down. On the road, all these guys kept looking--I mean really looking--at me. So I just smiled back, thinking, This must be my day on the 110 Freeway.
"Then I took my eyes off the road and glanced down at myself: I'd put on boots and my slip--but I'd forgotten to put on my dress! I pulled over to the shoulder and put the top up.
"But when I drove onto the studio lot, Josh Weiden, the show's executive producer, was waiting for me. He said, 'Come here, I want to talk to you.' Then he offered to park my car for me. He walked over and opened the door, and I had to get out--dressed in my boots and my little slip."
"Another really embarrassing moment for me was the day that I went to get my Maltese puppy, Thor. The breeder gave me his address and I drove to the right street--in the wrong town! The worst part was that I kept calling him and saying, 'I'm right here outside your house--where are you?"
monster mashing
It's a few weeks into Buffy's second season, and today's a "fight day." On the set, a giant sarcophagus (that's a mummy tomb to you) has been erected--and Sarah has to battle the evil chick inside it. Two choreographers call out directions: "Here you'll give her a kick. Raise your hand, and go across with your arm." "And here Buffy does a forward handspring."
"May I skip that please?" Sarah asks mock-meekly. Everyone craks up, knowing she'll do it 20 times if she has to. She has a rep for Wonder Woman antics.
"Crash through a window? Jump off a balcony? I'll say, 'I can do that,'" Sarah remarks. "A lot of times they let me." It helps that she's been taking tae kwon do (a kind of martial arts, like karate) since she was 9. "It was just for recreation. I was never into ballet," she shrugs. Ballet wouldn't have helped her battle the undead, either.
Is there deeper meaning to all this monster pounding? You bet. Sarah says it's a metaphor for high school life. "Remember the episode about the hyena-possesed kids who traveled around in a pack? It was actually about how people in high school can do mean things for mo reason at all--just because of a mob mentality." she says.
In another episode, a girl felt so invisible at school she actually diappeared. "I think there are times in everyone's life when they feel like that," Sarah says. "So it's important for there to be characters on TV like Buffy"--a heroine who has to deal with being labled the school freak and who squashes giant insects in her spare time.
inside slayer scoop
When the fight scene's over, Sarah and Nicholas Brendon (who plays Xander, the loyal bud with a major crush on Buffy) walk to Sarah's trailer. It's obvious these two dig each other, but it's a brother-sister kind of vibe. They launch into a typical sib squabble. "If you're going to play your music loud, you could at least play something good." Sarah says.
"The last CD that I played was Cake. I thought you liked that band," Nicholas replies.
"I don't like cake, and I don't like Cake, either," Sarah quips.
"So that's why you never cone to my trailer!" Nicholas retorts.
After he leaves, she gushes about him: "Working with Nicky Brendon and David Boreanaz [who plays her love interest, Angel], I don't exactly have a rough job."
So who would she date, Angel or Xander? "I think I'd make the Buffy mistake. You know, you should go out with Xander, but you fall for Angel because he's mysterious and dangerous."
No matter who this very single starlet dates, she's not the type to make the first move with any guy. "It just won't happen," she laughs. "I'll never be able to do that." Besides, she says, right now she'd be a terrible girlfriend. "I'm never home--I even feel sorry for my cat. Whenever I'm not working, I'm asleep."
Scream, the sequel...
YM: Do you remember where and when you saw the first Scream?
SMG: It was right before I left to go do Last Summer. Alyson [Hannigan, Willow on Buffy], Charisma [Charpenter, Cordelia on Buffy], and I went to the Hard Rock Cafe and had guacamole, brownies, and other bad stuff--then we saw it.
YM: Give us one word that describes your first day on the set.
SMG: The best word for that would be "intimidating."
YM: How so? You've been slashed before.
SMG: I show up for the first read-through, and I'm trying to be as cool as I can. And I get in the elevator with Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette.
YM: Guess that could be a little bit intimidating.
SMG: It was freaky. I basically shrunk into the back and tried to blend into the wall. Then Neve turned around and said, "You're Sarah right? Love [that's PO5's home girl Jennifer Love Hewitt] told me to say hay." After that I felt completely comfortable--well, at least a little less frightened.
YM: You must be a Party of Five viewer then.
SMG: Yes, actually we all watch Party of Five at Buffy.
YM: So you and Neve hit it off?
SMG: Totally.
YM: By now you must be a screaming pro.
SMG: I'll tell you one thing I've learned: I used to think horror flick actresses just went, "Oh, that bad, scary man" and ran away. But let me tell you, you get a wrenched bach, you lose your voice, and you become completely emotional.
YM: So being a scream queen got to you, huh?
SMG: When I returned to the Buffy set and had this big crying scene, at first I said, "I can't do it." Then I tapped into it and couldn't stop crying for about five minutes. The set was silent. I think I scared everybody--they all thought I went off the deep end. It was from going to that dark place too much.
YM: Now that really is scary.
SMG: But not nearly as scary as what I looked like the morning after those long hours of screaming.
life before Buffy
Sarah's life has been psycho-busy. She's carried a pager since the seventh grade (so her mom could track her down ). Such is the life of a child actress in New York City. But, Sarah says, though it may sound glamorous, it was a lonely existence at times.
"Elementary school was very dificult for me, On the weekends I had to decide whether to go out with all the kids or go to auditions." She chose auditions, winning acting jobs in commercials and TV movies. (She can still recite the lines from her first commercial, for Burger King, which she made when she was 5.) "The second you start missing school, you stop getting invited to parties and people stop talking to you."
Not that she'd trade acting for the world. Scripts, cameras, and screen tests get her pumped. She remembers her single mom (her folks divorced when she was very young) taking her to auditions, where they'd run into Melissa Joan Hart. "Then we'd all go out to eat after," says Sarah, who loved this 'cause she didn't have any siblings of her own.
In high school, Sarah was not in the popular patrol: She was more Willow (the shy bookworm) than Buffy. "I was a nerd," she admits. Life got better when she switched to New York's Professional Children's School. She was surrounded by other teen actors and took classes around her work schedule. At age 15 she won the role of Kendell Hart, the conniving, 21-year-old daughter of Erica (Susan Lucci) on All My Children.
With nearly zero real-life romance experience, Sarah was thrown into love-scene central---with actual bedroom sitches! "My first was a bit awkward, because Rudolph Martin [her kissing partner] was a lot older than I was." Needless to say, Sarah was jittery. "But when you know the guy's wearing sweatpants and sneakers under the covers, you realize it's just part of the job."
slaying in the big leagues
During her high school days, Sarah may not have been as headstrong as Buffy is, but they have a lot common. Buffy's slayer status makes her different from pals at school, which is Sarah's acting career did to her. "I had to decide between going to my junior prom and the Emmys," she says. (You guessed it, the Emmys won.) "But I did get to go to the after-prom party," she chirps.
Sarah graduated from high school early---after just two-and-a-half years---but stayed at All My Children till she was 17, winning an Emmy during her last season. How excited was she? "I can't really even put it into words!" she exclaims.
Sarah's work as Kendall prompted the Buffy casting director to consider her for the role as snobby Cordelia. Sarah read for the part of Cordelia, but then asked if she could try out for Buffy, too. Four auditions and five screen tests later, she'd won the part.
the juggling act
Filling up her plate at the set's buffet (veggies and lettuce, topped with low-fat dressing), Sarah dishes the gory details of her crazed schedule. She shoots Buffy five days a week, often working through the night for the graveyard scenes. And she squeezes in film work wherever she can: last summer she shot Scream 2 on the weekends.
So how does she cope? Does she stock up on java from Starbucks? Is she prone to random fits of hysteria? "Nah," she says, pointing to the various chairs on the set where she'll catch a few zzz's between takes.
"I become Nappy the Vampire Slayer," she jokes. "The hours are crazy, but I'm 20 years old. I'm supposed to pull all-nighters."
Part of this incredible drive, Sarah admits, comes from being an Aries. "I'm the kind of person who gets bored if I don't work for two days. Weekends are boring anyway." And it's not as if all her hard work hasn't paid off: "Being on the cover of YM is one of those things you always dream about," she says. "And now that it's happened, it's all very surreal."
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Last spring, Miss Thing wrapped up the first season of Buffy, then jetted to Southport, NC, to film I Know What You Did Last Summer. Here's the behind-the-scenes dirt
YM: Be honest. Do you dig horror flicks like this one?
SMG:Absolutely. There's nothing like the rush you get. You know it's fake, that nothing bad is really going to happen, but it's still scary and fun. It's kind of like a roller coaster ride.
YM: The psycho dude in this flick is a fisherman. Do you have a case of fishermen-phobia now?
SMG: Oh yeah, you do start having terrifying thoughts. Love [costar and former YM cover girl Jennifer Love Hewitt] and I kept getting freaked out because in North Carolina there were fishermen everywhere.
YM: Speaking of Jennifer, got any tales of back-stabbing competitiveness between you two angels?
SMG: Nah, we sort of had our own things going in the flick. Our characters got equal time. And when you're isolated in North Carolina, you don't feel competitive, you feel close; you have this shared will to survive.
YM: So who was you're best bud on the set?
SMG: We'd all kind of hang out. But I became really close with Freddie Prinze, Jr. I still have this funny picture of him in the tiarra I had to wear in the movie.
YM: You don't seam like a tiarra kind of girl.
SMG:I'm not! I hated that thing.
YM: Did you know any of the cast before you got to Southport?
SMG: I already knew Ryan Phillipe from my soap days---he used to be on One Life to Live [as Billy Douglas]. He's such an amazing actor that there were times we'd be filming and I'd forget my lines because I'd be so distracted by what he was saying.
YM: You're used to lots of punching and kicking on Buffy, but this flick had some serious action. Did you get hurt?
SMG: I'm notorious for getting injured, but it doesn't faze me. I could get a bruise the size of Montana and go, "Oh, you know. Whatever." For Love, getting a bruise was more of a surprise. She'd say, "Look at this bruise on my arm!"
YM: What did a workaholic like you find to do during your downtime in North Carolina?
SMG [laughing]: I got so bored that I picked up frame-making.
YM: You mean you made picture frames?
SMG: Hey---I had to do something!
"May I skip that please?" Sarah asks mock-meekly. Everyone craks up, knowing she'll do it 20 times if she has to. She has a rep for Wonder Woman antics.
"Crash through a window? Jump off a balcony? I'll say, 'I can do that,'" Sarah remarks. "A lot of times they let me." It helps that she's been taking tae kwon do (a kind of martial arts, like karate) since she was 9. "It was just for recreation. I was never into ballet," she shrugs. Ballet wouldn't have helped her battle the undead, either.
Is there deeper meaning to all this monster pounding? You bet. Sarah says it's a metaphor for high school life. "Remember the episode about the hyena-possesed kids who traveled around in a pack? It was actually about how people in high school can do mean things for mo reason at all--just because of a mob mentality." she says.
In another episode, a girl felt so invisible at school she actually diappeared. "I think there are times in everyone's life when they feel like that," Sarah says. "So it's important for there to be characters on TV like Buffy"--a heroine who has to deal with being labled the school freak and who squashes giant insects in her spare time.
inside slayer scoop
When the fight scene's over, Sarah and Nicholas Brendon (who plays Xander, the loyal bud with a major crush on Buffy) walk to Sarah's trailer. It's obvious these two dig each other, but it's a brother-sister kind of vibe. They launch into a typical sib squabble. "If you're going to play your music loud, you could at least play something good." Sarah says.
"The last CD that I played was Cake. I thought you liked that band," Nicholas replies.
"I don't like cake, and I don't like Cake, either," Sarah quips.
"So that's why you never cone to my trailer!" Nicholas retorts.
After he leaves, she gushes about him: "Working with Nicky Brendon and David Boreanaz [who plays her love interest, Angel], I don't exactly have a rough job."
So who would she date, Angel or Xander? "I think I'd make the Buffy mistake. You know, you should go out with Xander, but you fall for Angel because he's mysterious and dangerous."
No matter who this very single starlet dates, she's not the type to make the first move with any guy. "It just won't happen," she laughs. "I'll never be able to do that." Besides, she says, right now she'd be a terrible girlfriend. "I'm never home--I even feel sorry for my cat. Whenever I'm not working, I'm asleep."