Sarah Michelle Gellar slays in Ready or Not 2,…
There’s a scene in Sarah Michelle Gellar’s new film, “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come,” when her exquisitely tailor-made character abruptly stakes somebody through the shoulder. It’s a humorous second, a wink at “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” followers, and an wonderful reminder of why we need more Gellar in our films and reveals.
Alas, many of her die-hards had been devastated by Hulu’s latest determination not to transfer ahead with a new “Buffy” collection. “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 higher lip and signature resilience. “I promise, if the apocalypse actually comes, you can still beep me,” she said, nodding to a well-known line from the unique collection’ first season.
The actor stays passionate about her work, and strong enough to climate the industry’s fickleness.
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“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 workplace 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 difficult run in the ’90s and aughts highlight — including taking part in the long-lasting Buffy Summers — she took a chunk of time off to raise her two children. Decades later, her outlook on work has modified 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.”
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In this latest sequel (out this week), she’s really doing the other. As one member of an insanely rich household vying to take over a mystical seat of energy, Gellar’s character has her weapons skilled on poor Grace (Samara Weaving), a bride who spent the first film being hunted by her new husband’s demented household before she turned them all into human fireworks.
Gellar says she was a fast “yes” to seem in “Ready or Not 2,” because the first one was so distinctive, 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 movie obtained a roaring response during its world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin last weekend, leaving followers “cheering and gasping.”
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Seeing Gellar flip up in a horror-tinged characteristic is always a thrill. This is, after all, one of the actors who ushered in the early-aughts period of mainstream horror and proudly led the best way for younger feminine actors who had been drained of the confines of conventional girls’s roles in movie.
“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.”
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Gellar has always been fiercely supportive of her feminine pals. I’m pondering of her posts with Shannen Doherty, who died in 2024 after a battle with breast cancer, in which the 2 longtime buddies dueled sporting inflatable bubble fits or mastered the “wine challenge.” It appears, I observe, like they loved 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 got here ahead 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 younger actor, Gellar provides, “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 seems, “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.”
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Gellar, 48, grew up on the Upper East Side of New York as a working baby actor. “In a rent-controlled apartment!” she’s fast to add. “People are always like, ‘Was your life like “Gossip Girl”?’ I took three crosstown buses to get to faculty!” After a two-year, Daytime Emmy-winning run on “All My Children,” she was solid in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the hyper-verbal collection packed with monsters embodying a host of metaphors about the challenges of turning into an grownup. During its run, she moved into characteristic movies 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 latest years, she’s shown up in a vary of genres, from savvy darkish comedies like “Do Revenge” to the “Buffy”-reminiscent supernatural drama “Wolf Pack.” You may need caught her as a choose on “Star Search” this season, and later this yr she’ll add her voice to the salty animated collection “Breaking Bear.”
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Gellar says she’s grateful to have been in a cohort of actors that began to change the sport. “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 centered on pushing that change ahead, even if the leisure industry sometimes pushes back. Gellar, who had long maintained she wouldn’t do a “Buffy” revisit, warmed to the thought when Oscar-winning director Chloe Zhao (“Nomadland,” “Hamnet”) approached her about a collection set 25 years after the unique show’s timeline. Fans reacted with explosive pleasure, and had been crushed upon listening to the news of the collection being put on the shelf. Gellar is taking the news in stride, but has been deeply moved by the emotional response from “Buffy” followers worldwide.
“I am definitely feeling the outpouring of love,” she tells Alexa.
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Gellar also says she’s still grateful 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.”
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A touching image of that legacy is seen 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 promenade, the scholars 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.
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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 found a new favourite model 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 chance to grab her favourite salad from Balthazar, a go-to when she and her husband lived in Tribeca; the Prinzes and their youngsters 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 snort. “After I graduated high school, my party was at John’s [of Bleecker Street] pizza.”
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Mixed with the tasty culinary reminiscences are the more turbulent ones, from her youthful days on set when it appeared like no person was searching 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
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