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Switching from the Scooby Gang to Scooby Doo, coming back to life on Buffy and starring in a musical: it's been an eventful time for Sarah Michelle Gellar...

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The actress who plays Buffy the Vampire Slayer practically skips into the Beverly Hills hotel room where she's agreed to talk about her character and show, after the switch from the WB to UPN which garnered the new network with records ratings for its premiere season. The 24-year-old actress is clearly thrilled with her professional and personal life. She stars on a show that is now rating better than ever before. She also stars in the much-hyped upcoming big-screen live-action version of Scooby Doo as clumsy Daphne, opposite her real life fiancé Freddie Prinze Jr... and she's wearing a giant diamond on her ring finger, signifying her upcoming wedding plans. Unlike Buffy who died at the end of last season, life is clearly good for the Golden Globe-nominated actress who plays her.

When did you find out they were going to kill Buffy?

Joss [Whedon series creator/writer/producer/director] told me about it three years ago. Were shooting a scene where Faith [was comatose]. Buffy [had] tried to kill Faith but she had lived. [Then] Buffy had a dream where Faith said something along the lines of "Counting down from 361, Little Miss Muffet..." I don't remember the exact riddle. I didn't understand it, as I often don't understand what Joss puts in sometimes. I went to him and said "Could you explain this?" and he said, "Sure, as long as you swear not to tell anyone." That was the exact number of days until the 100th episode and Little Miss Muffet was going to be Dawn, so Buffy was going to get a sister and then [that] day was going to be the day that Buffy died.

The two-part premiere Bargaining was very scary - especially with Buffy having to dig her way out of her own coffin. How was it to film that scene?

First season, I had to crawl out of a grave and they promised me that I'd never ever have to do it again because I have a real phobia about cemeteries. But this time their theory was that last time I had to crawl out of a grave in a real cemetery, but this time it was on the stage - so it was totally different! Hmm, interesting! But it was funny, there were so much pressure coming back this year and obviously there has been a lot of drama about where the show is going and all that. That stuff is behind the scenes and doesn't really affect us, so we came in the first day and knew something was different but not much - except we had better craft services [catering] and a much better coffee machine [laughs]! I think a lot of times a show goes into its sixth season people say, "OK, this is a means to an end and we'll see how bad the show gets," but by moving to UPN and starting anew, it was almost like getting a second chance. It was almost like people were waiting to see a new show. It was that same excitement of a first season rather than just the start of the sixth season. It felt like we were all making a really good show and we shot it like a two-hour movie.

You're avoiding the question about actually shooting your character back from the dead!

For me, the difficult thing is playing something where obviously there was no one I could talk to about with any understanding of what it would feel like to come back from the dead. The best I could liken it was you film a movie in Australia and live in your own little world where they feed you every day, you live in a rented house with no bills to pay and everyone did everything, and then suddenly you're back here and it's like "Oh wait, you mean I have to do my own laundry again?" Unfortunately, that analogy is not even close to dying and coming back, so that aspect was very difficult. I almost started with a new Buffy. This was the next part of her life and that's exciting when you play a character for six years and you've fallen into the trap of "It's too easy, it's too boring." I'm finding new things to do with her every day because everything about her is different after this experience. Traffic is loud and lights are bright, so a lot of it was me finding my way alongside her and that was exciting. When Joss told me the whole story that she was going to have been in Heaven and that her friends thought she was in Hell and they brought her back from this peaceful place where she was most probably with her mother, you think about it and it's just devastating. So it was overwhelming pressure, but again it kept us all on our toes and we're still moving forward with that.

What is going on with Spike now? Is there going to be a new relationship?

I think that there's something about Spike for Buffy, in that he really understands her. Riley never really got her and unfortunately for Buffy, [Spike]'s undead and really not the upstanding boyfriend one could possibly ask for. But Buffy is really drawn to Spike and she doesn't understand it right away. She really tries to deny it. Their relationship will progress. There will be a surprise coming at the end of the musical episode. That's all I can say.

How did the musical episode [Once More With Feeling] come about on the show this season?

Joss had always wanted to do this musical episode. He had been talking about it for about as long as I could remember. We just thought that he was crazy so we went, "Oh yeah, sure, we'll do the musical episode when we do the flying episode!" But then he took the summer off to write it. [He] wrote the book and lyrics and came back and three weeks into the new season everyone got these CDs and music and lyric books. I don't think anybody understood what we were really going to do until he put it in front of us. While we've been shooting the first six episodes of the season, everyone has been taking singing lessons and recording because we've pre-recorded everything. My hope is that it will just be this amazing hour of television. It's just a Buffy episode, no different. There is a bad guy, we research it and it's very, very similar to the basic theme of the show - only everybody sings and dances and each character has their own thing. Two characters are very sort of Broadway standard book musical. Dawn and Buffy are much more sort of hip-hop young pop type songs. Spike is very Billy Idol, but it's very hard to explain unless you see it.

How do you feel about Anthony Stewart Head leaving the show?

I don't think it's really hit any of us yet, because he left for a couple of episodes at the beginning of the year and he goes home to England a lot, so it just felt like a break. Tony has been with us from the start - there's only been three of us that have bee there since the pilot and it's Tony, Nick [Brendon, Xander] and I It is really, really hard to imagine not having him around on a personal level and on a professional level. He's the one that always explains everything. I'm terrified I'm going to wind up having to explain and use all the big, challenging words!

So what happens to your character now that he is gone?

I have to be more responsible, I guess. To be honest, I don't really now. Right now, he's not contractually obligated to come back for any more, but he has said he'll make himself available, although I don't know what that means because he may go back home and start working on the Buffy spin-off and not have time. But right now, I think we're having some of our best episodes. What we have gone back to more is the idea that Buffy can be anything. Instead of having one arc where it was sad for six episodes and then it was funny, we're sort of doing every episode as it's own crazy theme. You don't know where everything is going and I think a lot of it is changing just by how the story is going. For Buffy, her whole thing has been that her friends brought her back from the dead and she can't tell them where she was. Living on Earth for her is her own Hell, having to be responsible, to be adult. Now Giles leaving is a continuation of that: she's not a teenager anymore. What happens when - all of a sudden - you really do have to be an adult and for Buffy that means being a mother as well. So I will miss him more than I can really understand at this point, I think, but storytelling-wise it was the right time. He didn't leave us at a bad time.

Do you ever regret that Buffy keeps you away from movie opportunities?

When I was coming up into being a teenager there weren't that many roles that were interesting. There was no Ally McBeal or Felicity or Alias. It was sort of nerve-wracking to come into that time [in your life] because you're too old to play the child in the movies, but you're certainly still too young to be the girlfriend or the wife or mother. But all of a sudden television took this amazing, revolutionary turn and made all these female empowered character-driven shows that never existed before. It was such an honour to do that and such a challenge. I've been fortunate to play characters like Kathryn in Cruel Intentions and Daphne in Scooby Doo, but that other stuff in this point in my life still doesn't afford me the opportunities like Buffy does. Until I'm a bit older I'll never get the opportunities in feature films to do what I can every week on the show.

I've never regretted staying with the show. It's not like, "Oh, I wish I could be doing this movie or that movie" because my opportunity right now is really here. I haven't had a day off since the third episodes [of this season] in late July, not even a weekend. I've clocked up something like 17 hours of singing lessons outside work and 19 hours of dance lessons and another 8 hours of recording the musical episode, so I'm tired. I'm sure there will come a time where it will be time [to stop], but I haven't regretted that the time hasn't come yet.

When I got Scooby Doo I was really nervous because there's no why the show should let me go. In my mind, I'm thinking I should be grateful enough to be there. Why would they rework the entire schedule so I can fly across the continent and make a movie elsewhere? But Joss was really understanding in knowing that part of what keeps me here is the fact that I get the opportunity to do other stuff. Usually, by the time you get to the end of the season you're burnt out and exhausted and counting down the days, but instead I found myself the exact opposite. Doing Scooby Doo enthused me more to come back. I wanted to try this and work that and I thought of Buffy while I was there. It made it that much more exciting to do both.

Who was first cast in Scooby Doo: you or Freddie?

Imagine the pressure at home [laughs]! It was really funny, but they played that really well, I have to say. I went in on a Friday. They had always been interested in Freddie all along, but I think they had more reservations about me. Daphne is the character, obviously, that always gets kidnapped, is always in trouble, that everyone has to rescue. I think a lot of their concerns were "Is an audience going to buy that I am not going to kick butt?" Are they going to buy that I am not going to turn around and beat up the bad guys?" So I had to go in and really sell myself and say, "I'm an actress and you have to remember that I'm certainly not Buffy." I can't take care of myself that way. I'm lucky if I can cross the street! So they met Freddie on Saturday and then Monday morning they called both our agents at exactly the same time to say we both got the jobs!

Next issue: Sarah Michelle Gellar on her increasing power behind-the-scenes on Buffy, her impending marriage and being a role model.

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