There’s a scene in Sarah Michelle Gellar’s new movie, “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come,” when her exquisitely tailored character abruptly stakes someone through the shoulder. It’s a funny moment, a wink at “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” fans, and an excellent reminder of why we need more Gellar in our movies and shows.
Alas, many of her die-hards were devastated by Hulu’s recent decision not to move forward with a new “Buffy” series. “I’m definitely more disappointed for the fans,” Gellar tells Alexa. “They were honestly the reason I was doing this. I have been in this industry long enough to know how this works.”
She announced the news on her Instagram last weekend with a stiff upper lip and signature resilience. “I promise, if the apocalypse actually comes, you can still beep me,” she said, nodding to a famous line from the original series’ first season.
The actor remains passionate about her work, and strong enough to weather the industry’s fickleness.
“I feel so genuinely excited to get to do the things I do, and I think it shows,” says Gellar, Zooming with Alexa from her home office in LA. “When I was younger, everything was about work. My agents would joke, ‘Here comes the countdown, she’s going to be asking what she’s doing when this [project] wraps.’ That was all I knew of myself since I was four!”
After a long, sometimes challenging run in the ’90s and aughts spotlight — including playing the iconic Buffy Summers — she took a chunk of time off to raise her two kids. Decades later, her outlook on work has changed dramatically.
“If the director is a screamer, I’m not going to do it,” she says. “Or if it’s a great script, but the number one [actor] on the call sheet is difficult, I don’t want to do it. If I’m going to be away from home, I want to enjoy it! There’s no pressure. I’m not saving lives.”
In this latest sequel (out this week), she’s actually doing the opposite. As one member of an insanely wealthy family vying to take over a mystical seat of power, Gellar’s character has her weapons trained on poor Grace (Samara Weaving), a bride who spent the first movie being hunted by her new husband’s demented family before she turned them all into human fireworks.
Gellar says she was a quick “yes” to appear in “Ready or Not 2,” because the first one was so unique, mashing up horror, laughs and arch social commentary. “It’s such a category all its own,” she says. “And I feel like so much these days is repetitive.”
The film received a roaring response during its world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin last weekend, leaving fans “cheering and gasping.”
Seeing Gellar turn up in a horror-tinged feature is always a thrill. This is, after all, one of the actors who ushered in the early-aughts era of mainstream horror and proudly led the way for young female actors who were tired of the confines of traditional women’s roles in film.
“When I did [2004’s] ‘The Grudge,’ it was the second-highest female opening ever at the time, only second to Angelina Jolie in ‘Tomb Raider,’” Gellar says. “And that was crazy to me. But it was because women didn’t lead movies, and horror was the one genre where they make them for less money. So, they would give women these three-dimensional roles; they weren’t just relegated to the girlfriend role, the wife. You really got to do something active.”
Gellar has always been fiercely supportive of her female friends. I’m thinking of her posts with Shannen Doherty, who died in 2024 after a battle with breast cancer, in which the two longtime pals dueled wearing inflatable bubble suits or mastered the “wine challenge.” It seems, I observe, like they enjoyed the hell out of each other. “That’s actually the best description of our friendship I’ve ever heard,” she agrees. Gellar also publicly stood by “Buffy” co-stars Charisma Carpenter and the late Michelle Trachtenberg when they came forward about abuse on their show’s set. “I mean, I hope everybody stands up for their female friends!” she says.
But coming up in the industry as a young actor, Gellar adds, “I was taught that women didn’t like other women.” These days, she feels a sea change. “I look at the cast of ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer,’ the new one,” in which Gellar appears, “and I look at Chase [Sui Wonders] and Sarah [Pidgeon] and Maddie [Cline], and 20 years ago, those girls would have been at each other’s throats, not because they wanted to, but because they were pitted against each other. And they do nothing but support each other. So, I do think that narrative has changed.”
Gellar, 48, grew up on the Upper East Side of New York as a working child actor. “In a rent-controlled apartment!” she’s quick to add. “People are always like, ‘Was your life like “Gossip Girl”?’ I took three crosstown buses to get to school!” After a two-year, Daytime Emmy-winning run on “All My Children,” she was cast in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the hyper-verbal series packed with monsters embodying a host of metaphors about the challenges of becoming an adult. During its run, she moved into feature films with roles in 1997’s “Scream 2” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” In the latter, she met Freddie Prinze Jr., to whom she’s been married since 2002 — a million lifetimes in Hollywood years. She also made a splash in 1999’s “Cruel Intentions,” a millennial retelling of “Dangerous Liaisons.” In recent years, she’s shown up in a range of genres, from savvy dark comedies like “Do Revenge” to the “Buffy”-reminiscent supernatural drama “Wolf Pack.” You might have caught her as a judge on “Star Search” this season, and later this year she’ll add her voice to the salty animated series “Breaking Bear.”
Gellar says she’s grateful to have been in a cohort of actors that started to change the game. “Reese [Witherspoon] and I were just talking about this the other day. We were pitted against each other when we were young, and we were able to get through that, because we could see through it. I came up with Keri Russell and Katie [Holmes] and Michelle [Williams], and those are all great, hardworking women I still have nothing but respect for. So, I feel like my generation was kind of the first one where we started to change things.”
Now, she’s focused on pushing that change forward, even if the entertainment industry sometimes pushes back. Gellar, who had long maintained she wouldn’t do a “Buffy” revisit, warmed to the idea when Oscar-winning director Chloe Zhao (“Nomadland,” “Hamnet”) approached her about a series set 25 years after the original show’s timeline. Fans reacted with explosive joy, and were crushed upon hearing the news of the series being put on the shelf. Gellar is taking the news in stride, but has been deeply moved by the emotional reaction from “Buffy” fans worldwide.
“I am definitely feeling the outpouring of love,” she tells Alexa.
Gellar also says she’s still thankful for the time she spent imagining a future Sunnydale with Zhao.
“I never saw myself revisiting this world, but thanks to Chloé I had the chance,” she says. “I will forever be grateful to her for this. And more than ever I am truly understanding the love for her and for me in this role. Nothing changes that or the legacy.”
A touching symbol of that legacy is visible behind Gellar on her bookshelf. It’s a tiny, delicate umbrella, a reconstruction of a “Buffy” prop from an emotional scene in the show: At the Sunnydale prom, the students give her character the “class protector” award. “Chloé hired a prop person to make an exact replica of it for me,” she shares, clearly still moved by the gesture.
Meanwhile, Gellar revisited her New York past in her shoot with Alexa. “We shot at Chelsea Piers, which is walking distance from my old apartment,” she says. “The fashion was fabulous. Every time another look would come out, I’d be like, ‘That one’s my favorite. No, that one’s my favorite.’” She also discovered a new favorite brand on the shoot — an aptly named one, at that. “Icon Denim! They’re almost like sweatpants. Those might have disappeared from the set. If they’re looking for them, I don’t have them,” she says with a grin.
Gellar also took the opportunity to grab her favorite salad from Balthazar, a go-to when she and her husband lived in Tribeca; the Prinzes and their children relocated to LA around 2011, when her daughter was 2. Gellar loves West Coast life, but pines for NYC food. “I will not eat pizza in LA,” she says with a laugh. “After I graduated high school, my party was at John’s [of Bleecker Street] pizza.”
Mixed with the tasty culinary memories are the more turbulent ones, from her younger days on set when it seemed like nobody was looking out for her well-being. “They were all screamers,” she says. “That’s just how it was. You got yelled at. But now, it’s like, that doesn’t have to happen. The business has changed. I didn’t have those [protective] people when I was younger. And I really hope to be that for all of my younger casts.”
Photographer: Victoria Stevens; Editor: Alev Aktar; Stylist: Anahita Moussavian; Photo Editor: Jessica Hober; Talent Booker: Patty Adams Martinez; Hair: Lisa Aharon; Makeup: Justine Marjan; Fashion Assistant: Dominic Turiczek; On-set Assistant: Pankaj Khadka Contributing Editor: Serena French
