Interview parue dans le numéro 93 (juillet 2002) du magazine britannique SFX. Spoilers sur la saison 6.
Is the next season Buffy's last? What's happening with the Buffy movie? How's sex with Spike? Sarah Michelle Gellar and producer Marti Noxon are armed with the answers. By Steve O'Brien
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"I FEEL OLD," MOANS SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR, reflecting on six years of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the series that has nurtured her between the ages of 19 and 25. "I feel like I finally got to the place where I look around and crew members are younger than me and I don't understand when that happened."
"Don't talk to me about getting old," snaps producer Marti Noxon, comically, "it's not acceptable."
These are the two girls - sorry, women - at the top of the Buffy hierarchy. Here's Sarah Michelle Gellar, star, the woman who six years ago was plucked from a round-the-block procession of bleached-blonde Valley girls to breathe three-dimensional life into Joss Whedon's '90s spin-dried heroine. Sitting beside her is Marti Noxon, producer, the woman to whom Joss Whedon has entrusted Buffy while his attentions are stolen by his new space series, Firefly.
Together they're quite a team, these two women whose ages are separated by over a decade. And this union makes Buffy one of the few shows on TV that could convincingly call itself feminist, without accusations of patronising male paternalism. But they're treading a commercially rocky path. Rumours are that the male demographic is slipping away from this newly chick-flicked Buffy. "I think WB's demographic is much more young and female," is Gellar's response, skilfully sidestepping the accusation.
Marti Noxon started writing for Buffy The Vampire Slayer in its second season, graduating to supervising producer, co producer, co-executive producer and eventually executive producer for series six. So she's seen Buffy blossom from its insecure beginnings into something akin to a cultural atom bomb. Were they aware they were in something huge when they joined?
"No," offers Noxon. "I mean, when I first got this job, I called my mom to tell her and there was this long pause and she said, 'Oh honey, next year you'll do better.'"
"The same thing happened to me," pipes in Gellar. "In fact Kiefer Sutherland told me, 'Oh don't worry, you'll get another pilot next year.'"
"I think we were aware that we were doing something different," she continues, "but I don't think you ever have any understanding of any impact that it makes and especially because I think we live in our own little world here. We come in at six o'clock in the morning and we leave at night and all of a sudden you'll realise. I mean, you'll go into a store and there will be all this Buffy merchandise or you'll be in another city in a taxi cab and you'll see the billboards... Or the Buffy lollipops."
One of the braver aspects of Buffy is that it does tend to reinvent itself each season, for better or worse. The girl Gellar prefers to think it's always for the better.
"The reason I think it stays fresh is because with the concept of the show we have the ability to try different things," she notes, "and I think it's incredibly exciting in that sense. It's really stood on its own. I miss a little bit of fun in Buffy and I think what this is about is getting her to the place which is where all twentysomethings want to be. You want to get to the place where you're happy with who you are in your life. That's what she's working towards."
But Noxon, as the overall author of this season's change of tone, is more vocal. "The fans are going to be incredibly resistant to change," she says, "and yet if you don't give them change they'll be bored and they'll stop watching."
"I think that we try something and then once it's done we move on," adds Gellar. "Sometimes we try external villains and sometimes they're internal villains. This year it happened to be our own demons, and the nice thing is it's sort of like a movie in the sense that our seasons really do have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It's almost like telling a new story every year. This year we actually got a new Bronze! It's five years and we finally got a new set!"
"And it looks on camera exactly like the old Bronze," interrupts Noxon, with a wry smile.
"I think that they've let us grow," Gellar continues. "I talk to my friends on other shows and they're like, 'Yeah, we're still in our sophomore year of high school or college but we have progressively every year gotten older and moved forward and I think that's really important. You cheat your audience if you try to keep it in one place. We've seen Buffy go from a high school student, to all of a sudden being a single mother. I don't envy her."
Noxon agrees. "Some people have a problem with the 'grey area' that the show has been in for the last couple of years; they miss the good old days when it was about cheerleading. But we can't carry on trying to play the high school-type metaphors. A huge part of keeping the show alive is allowing it to become more complex."
"That's what you do at 25," adds Gellar. "You're finding yourself and your inner demons and there's this battle at that point. So I think we've been really true and I think it really gives something to our audience. It's good to relate to an audience that's stuck by us for so many years."
Buffy's single parent mothering of Dawn has certainly dilated and strengthened her character, and for Gellar it was made simpler because of her career history with Michelle Trachtenberg. They worked together on the soapy drama All My Children, Gellar playing - brace yourself - Kendall Hart Lang Henry on the show from '93-'95, crossing over with Trachenberg's time on the series as Lily Montgomery.
"I'm very protective of Michelle," she says, sweetly. "This is a girl that I've known since she was eight years old, so I've always been incredibly protective. That doesn't change. I'm still like, 'Don't curse around her' and then I have to remember that she goes to high school. She knows every word better than I do!"
There's been a deepening of the relationship between Buffy and Dawn in season six, and also an serious amping up of the Buffy/Spike "thang". From the coy flirting and sparring of the last season has come sex. With a capital "S". So, is it love or is it just great, dirty, sweaty SEX?
"I think it's twentysomething really good sex," Gellar says with a wide, comically filthy smile. "But I think that Buffy's greatest love is Angel. It will always be Angel. Nothing in her life will ever compare to that. Then she fell in love with Riley, and he was who she was supposed to fall in love with next. She let him down essentially. What she's learning is there are no rules, and what she's also learning is you can be in a relationship with someone but it might not be the true love or the one you end up with, and there's nothing wrong with that."
Noxon's listening intently. "I had an interesting thought about the whole Spike thing recently," she says, "because we'd been talking a lot about it, a lot of the press has asked about it, and I realised that in some ways I think it's underselling the Buffy character to say that she's not ready for love. She's not ready to settle down and I think a lot of times women who are independent and strong get into these really chaotic relationships and part of it is to preserve their sense of themselves, and it's actually something that a heroic woman would do if she's afraid of being domesticated."
Last issue, James Marsters was gushingly generous in his praise of Sarah Michelle Gellar's help with their, er, Barry White moments. She's equally big-hearted, it seems. "He makes it incredibly comfortable. I've been with this group for six years and so if I feel like I'm silly or I feel uncomfortable they help me out. They're like my family and although you don't really want your family to see you doing that, it certainly makes it easier I think..."
"It is truly the unsexiest thing in the world," notes Noxon. "I used to feel very embarrassed when I'd have to come down and watch a scene where you'd have to say, 'Could your orgasm be a little louder?' It is so void of actual sexiness. It's performance, and people really forget that."
"Boreanaz and I were the worst," smiles Gellar, wickedly. "We used to do the most horrible things to each other, like eat tuna fish and eat pickles and like when he had to unbutton my shirt or my pants I'd pin it or sew it together. Or the ice cream, when I dropped the ice cream on him in the middle of a scene. We'd live for that kind of stuff."
James Marsters has mentioned that he was surprised by the plot development between the Spike and the Buffster. How surprised was Gellar?
"I'm lucky enough to know in advance," she replies, her star status immediately apparent, "so I had time to comprehend. The storylines are always shocking - that's the fun of the show. You never know what direction it's going to go. I remember - like how many years ago? - I was sitting on an airplane with Joss and we're flying back from Florida and he goes, 'You know I was thinking about next year, you know with Angel spinning off. What do you think about bringing James back permanently?' And that's just how everything happens on this show."
Of course, Sarah Michelle Gellar ain't single (sorry, chaps). Boyfriend is Freddie Prinze Jr, king of the dumb frat house comedy and Fred to Gellar's Daphne in the forthcoming Scooby-Doo movie. Gellar claims he doesn't watch her love scenes, though there was one he watched intently. "Yeah, he liked the Cruel Intentions kiss," she laughs, referring to her tender snog with Selma Blair. And, as Barry Norman wouldn't say, why not?
Actors talk a lot of the "fun" of their sets, about the camaraderie between the actors. Most of the time this is a thick smokescreen to disguise the rampaging egos and bitter jealousies that exist behind every sham smile. But there's always been a strong element of truth in this cast's claims. So, what has been among the funniest moments on your set so far? Gellar ponders the question for a moment until her face lights up in ecstatic remembrance. "When we pantsed Nick!" she exclaims.
"When did that happen?" asks a puzzled Noxon.
"Oh, that was before you were here. Alyson [Hannigan] and I came up with this really funny idea to pants Nick [Brendon] - to pull his pants down, in a big gym sequence the first season. About a couple minutes before I chickened out, but Alyson didn't, and Nick wasn't wearing anything underneath his shorts!"
Marti Noxon looks momentarily confused. "I never heard this story..."
Amber Benson said recently in an interview that Gellar gets through a book a week on set, and not shitty airport novels either. She blushes.
"This is interesting coming from Amber, " she says. "Seriously, Amber's like my dealer. She comes up and goes, 'Have you read this book yet?' She's the only person that beats me at the bookstore!"
What's clear is that both Gellar and Noxon are monstrously proud of this series. They're aware they're in a premier league that includes The West Wing, ER and The Sopranos - even if the genre snobs from the Emmy's don't realise it.
"We don't make our show for those people," says Gellar. "We make the show for the people that stop me every single day on the street. I mean, 60-year old men tell me, 'I have no grandchildren, or children, but I love watching the show,' or four-year-olds come up to me on the street and call me Buffy. We make the show for those people."
"If it's not working between the characters, if it's not rooted in some kind of real experience, we don't really feel like those are stories worth telling," mulls Noxon. "I think that non-genre fans can enjoy the show on a sort of human level, and then of course we do deliver on the genre stuff. I mean our episodes literally change genre every week, so you don't really know what you're getting and I think that just keeps the franchise really alive. Joss obviously is the person who sets the tone, but the rest of us writers all just have a great passion for what we're doing and so does the cast. Everybody really feels for it and if we didn't we probably wouldn't be here."
The cast and crew's fondness for their creative leader is tediously well documented. Joss Whedon is no ivory-towered tyrant, to be feared as well as worshipped. This is a bloke who's regularly on set, who invites the cast round to his house for jocular Shakespeare readings and who hangs out for beers and goss. And the cast are usually feverish to tell the world of Whedon's lyrical genius. "But, you know, I'm still trying to figure out what some of these words mean," smiles Gellar. "From the day I started, I went to my audition and I had the line, 'What's the sitch' and I had no idea what that meant. To this day I'm all, 'Is this some word that I don't know?"' She looks at Marti. "You understand Joss a lot better than me."
Noxon smirks. "It's mostly made up. I mean it really is, we make up a lot of the stuff!"
Stardom's a difficult thing for young people. They wouldn't say so, but for the folks around them, the salvo of sycophancy and red carpet treatment can turn otherwise good people into insufferable hate figures. Gellar reluctantly admits to getting better tables at restaurants, but Noxon is mindful of dispelling any myths about the star's possible prima-donna-isms. "Sarah has a bearing and a kind of a grace about it that I've rarely ever seen," she says, "and I think it's because she's been doing this since she was old enough to have an identity."
"Hands down, I'm so spoiled!" interjects Gellar. "I work on a show with a woman that I admire so much. Marti and I have the best relationship, I get the opportunity to do lots of other things and I'm just incredibly happy and proud which I think is a lucky combination at my age. I mean, most 25-year olds are like, you know, 'I don't know what I want to do. My parents are going to kick me out of my house...'"
"When I was 25," says Noxon, "I was like, 'Do you want fries....?'"
Gellar smiles. "Honey, I've been saying that for three months now," referting to Buffy's new job at the Doublemeat Palace.
The job's something of a déjà vu experience for Gellar given she was a spokesperson for Burger King at only five years old. "Let me tell you something," she says. "It was eye-opening. Next time I go to McDonalds and the fries aren't ready, I'm just going to be like, 'Whatever you guys want, just whatever.'" Does she still eat them? "I love burgers," she exclaims, a little unconvincingly. "You know who makes the best burgers is our caterers. They're really good!"
Like (the late) Ally McBeal, Buffy's an unusual show in that it showcases a woman who's both good-looking yet whose emotions are nakedly on show. Far from the stellarised icons of the past, these are touchable role models, girls next door with better legs.
"Everyone that says it's such a burden to be a role model and this and that - they're looking at it the wrong way," she says. "It's an honour. I know when I was growing up how important certain female icons were to me and I know that I didn't have as many to choose from. I think that it's so wonderful these days that young girls have a heroine. But you have to know that there's a certain line of separation, there's a certain point where I am Sarah and I'm not Buffy in my responsibility."
But you must be asked for advice?
"I think the most important thing is to believe in yourself," she says in Oprah-speak, "and if there's something you want to do and you feel like you have to do it, whatever it is, then you have to go for it. As a person you're never going to be fulfilled if there's something in your life that you've always wanted to do - whether it's a career, or living in a city or any of those things."
Does she think she shares any personality traits with the Slayer?
"I think at a certain point it gets really hard to separate from your character, and her pain is so genuine to me that sometimes it was just so hard - I'd leave and I'd be just so unbelievably depressed because her pain is mine. I think you get to a point where a character becomes your friend, it becomes someone that you know, someone that you've been through all of these things with and I think it's always fun and exciting to try different stuff. "
Of course, this year sees Gellar's potential big break movies. She's been there before with the great Cruel Intentions, as well as more dignified failures such as Harvard Man and Simply Irresistible, but Scooby-Doo is the one everybody has their beady eye on.
"This show has always been incredibly generous and understanding that, as a creative person, working in another only enthuses you more and gets your creativity up - the same that I know that Marti doesn't just write Buffy, she writes other things. For me, it's the same thing and they've always been unbelievably generous including letting me travel from continent to continent. "
Says Noxon: "It was difficult for her because she was on planes for 16-18 hours half the time, but is exactly what Sarah is saying know that when she goes away to do other projects that invigorates her and it also allows her to not resentful that she's missing stuff she'd like to do. We try with all of the actors - I mean Amber just did a movie and Alyson's done movies, so we try really hard to do that when we can."
Gellar agrees. "It opens up your fan base. You have to remember that television, especially the WB or UPN in the United States or even abroad - it's just another way to get out there. If one person sees a movie that one of us is in and goes, 'Oh, I really like that person, I'm going to tune into that show', well that person tells a person and that's how a chain starts, so it's only beneficial.
"As a creative person - you always have to make sure that you're sharpening all your tools at all times. It's important that Marti doesn't just write Buffy, because when you write other things it gives you ideas and it gets your brain going. It's like any kind of exercise, it gets your creative juices flowing, and for me working outside of the show has just made it so easy for me to continue because I'm challenged and fulfilled every way possible and they've always been so unbelievably generous in that sense to me."
Noxon's nodding. "We've bent over backwards because we want people to be happy working on Buffy and we also recognise that if they feel like they're missing out on things - which is why you'll see some sort of episodes where Buffy's a rat or Emma suddenly has to go off on some tangent. We're trying to accommodate them so they'll be happy, and truly I think that's probably why the show is still working, because people still feel energised."
Scooby-Doo's a big gamble for Gellar. Early buzz ain't too encouraging, but during the shoot, which took her to the sunny climes of Australia, she had some comfort in being with her celeb boyfriend. But the downside was that a celebrity couple always has the paparazzi following closely behind. She claims it's not so much of a problem in her own country, though. "I'm not really a novelty here," she says, with a surprising amount of ego-less honesty. "I'm kind of old news, as someone told me the other day. You know, I was doing a cover for a magazine for the Young Hollywood issue and they explained to me, 'How does it feel not belonging to Young Hollywood any more? You're kind of on the old spectrum'."
Okay, so the rumours are that this season - the sixth - is _Buffy_'s penultimate. Nick Brendon (the snitch) has suggested as much in a recent interview, but Gellar, whether she knows or doesn't, is avoiding the question with the skill of a Bill Clinton. "I think the important thing about a television show, or any production, is that as long as everyone's still on the same page and everyone feels that we're still making good television or pushing the envelope then we're here.
"I think we kicked the mould," she continues. "We were really one of the first shows that showed a female kicking butt and I think we've paved the way for young heroines - for shows that can evolve around a three- dimensional female character. If you look at how the trend has gone since then, I really feel like we started that."
Says Noxon: "I got a question from a journalist who was writing about all the new female heroines on television and she asked me where I thought all it started. I-oh-so-modestly said, '1 think it started when Joss Whedon wrote Buffy The Vampire Slayer'. I mean, there have been other shows that had strong women, but not someone who wasn't out of the fantasy. Even though Sarah plays a supernatural character, she is in fact a real girl. She has all the concerns of a real girl, she gets boy crazy, all the stuff that you weren't able to reconcile before. We sort of said you could be both human and fallible, and you can be the star and the hero, so that's definitely what he did."
Of course, talk now is of a Buffy movie. If it's good enough for Star Trek and The X-Files then it's good enough for Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Whedon has alluded to the possibility, but seems more interested in ramping up once the TV series has breathed its cathode ray last. And it's one sure-fire way Gellar and pals could be guaranteed big screen success, so the spirit seems to be there.
"It's something that has been discussed," says Marti Noxon. "I can probably guarantee that it's not going to happen during the life of the show. It will probably happen - if it happens - down the road after people have had time to do other projects. I mean Joss has expressed interest. I don't know how Sarah feels about it. I assume that again if it happened it would probably be after everybody's had some time to be other people for a while."
Gellar furrows her brow. "One thing I think that concerns me is just that how do you tell one story? How do you have two hours? I mean, we have a hard enough time doing a two-parter. We have too much story to tell, and I think that Marti's right, as long as we're here, we have 22 hours to tell every year."
Which is a yes, we think. But how long will those series of 22 hours continue? The cast (well, apart from Brendon, Buffy's loose-tongued answer to Stephen Byers) are mum on the subject, and the film remains a hypothetical wet dream for Buffy afficianados. But rest assured, the Buffy franchise seems to be secure, whether it's in the form of Angel, The Watcher or Buffy feature flicks. And you guess neither of these two women will be far from any of them... SFX
Has the latest season of Buffy scared off every male viewer it's ever managed to seduce? SFX looks at how Buffy is now really a serialized chick-flick.
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SERIOUS BUFFY FANS MIGHT HAVE NOTICED AN ODD change come over the show this year. Far fromm being its usual, kick-ass self, the series has undegone a metamorphosis which, if left unchecked, could send male viewers scurrying for the hills as the opening credits roll.
Yes, Buffy The Vampire Slayer has gone a bit girly. Fair enough, the show wasn't the world's butchest program from the outset; our heroine used to moan about breaking fingernails during slayage, or worry about what dress to wear to the prom. Despite this, however, Buffy still appealed to men and women, mostly thanks to the potent mixture of fighting and romance it once contained.
But things have changed. During the show's sixth year of life, we've been treated to Dawn's first, fumbling attenmpts of dating; Willow and Tara's ups and downs; Xander and Anya planning their wedding; Spike turning into a lovelorn fool, and an all-singing, all-dancing spectacle. Where's the guts? Is Buffy turning into Dawson's Creek with the occasional demon thrown in to remind us that there's more to Sunnydale than relationships?
Buffy's descent seems to have coincidated with creator Joss Whedon - possibly the busiest bunny in the world of entertainment today - turning the show's reins over to Marti Noxon, who now holds the title of Executive Producer. Noxon, no stranger to the world of Sunnydale after having served on the show since 1998, has been steering a listing Buffy on seas Whedon would have surfed across with a big, doofy grin on his face. Whedon had the beautiful gift of balancing love, violence, angst and humour on screen. Noxon, for all her talents, doesn't seem to be able to keep that equilibrium. Buffy is still Buffy, but it's losing its edge, veering wildly towards soap opera concepts and - let's say it - fluff.
Ooh. Controversial. But let's look at the evidence...
:: retour à l'index des interviews ::
We just shot a scene where I asked them what 'Padawan' was. It was like I'd finally crossed the line. Jane Espenson just threw her arms up; she was like 'Aargh! You're not even a real geek! You just play one! Padawan ?! Come on!' And she walked away. It was really funny. (Danny Strong - BtVS Magazine #36)