The Girl's Got Bite: The Original Unauthorized Guide to Buffy's World

by Kathleen Tracy

  No doubt much of the change in attitude toward vampires has to do with the times in which we live. During Victorian times, the qualities embodied by the vampire—the lusty, erotic, dangerous creature not bound by social convention—reflected the very aspects of man that era sought to repress. The sensibility of those times was incorporated both in 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and in the 1994 film adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, starring Tom Cruise.

  While the majority of vampire portrayals maintain the convention that the undead are monsters who must be stopped, some opt for a more complex identity which in many ways reflects our own dual natures as creatures that can embody the greatest good and the worst evil. Now, vampires don’t have to represent all that is evil.

  Although vampires have populated close to a hundred films and have been the topics of literature for the past several centuries, television has been slower to jump on the vampire bandwagon. Part of that is the nature of series—how does one incorporate a vampire over an extended period of time? The easiest way is through comedy. In TV’s The Munsters, Lily and Grandpa were vampires, but without any bite. And in the 1988 animated Count Duckula, a vegetarian duck battles against everyone’s attempt to turn him to a bloodsucker.

  Developing a dramatic series with a vampire as a lead character has proven to be a trickier matter, but in the right setting, vampires have shown they can be TV stars, too. In 1967, ABC introduced the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, about two-hundred-year-old vampire named Barnabas Collins. Using soap conventions, Dark Shadows managed to milk the vampire myth for five seasons. Part of its success was due to the willingness of daytime viewers to accept the Gothic setting. Plus, daytime serials tend to move at a slower pace than prime-time shows, so it fit traditional vampire storytelling conventions.

  The Night Stalker, one of the better scary television movies ever made, starred Darren McGavin as reporter Carl Kolchak, who investigates a series of gruesome murders in Las Vegas. But when ABC made the 1971 movie into a 1974 series, it proved impossible to sustain the story lines—which branched out beyond vampires into monsters of all kinds. The genuine fear-factor that had made the original telefilm so effective, mutated into toothless camp, and the show was canceled after a year. Years later, though, it served as one of the main inspirations for the much more popular nine-year series The X-Files.

  The 1990s series Forever Knight and Kindred: The Embraced both took the “Vampires are people, too” approach. In Forever Knight, an eight-hundred-year-old vampire works as a Toronto homicide detective in an attempt to atone for his past sins and somehow regain his mortality. In Kindred: The Embraced a vampire named Luna is the prince of several clans of vampires—or Kindred—living in San Francisco. It’s his job to maintain peace between the clans and enforce the Kindred rules against taking a human life or turning a human into a vampire against their wishes.

  The lead characters of both series are reminiscent of Buffy’s Angel—vampires who have maintained some remnant of their humanity or are attempting to repent for atrocities they may have committed earlier during their lives as vampires. This trend of humanizing some vampires while acknowledging the overall evil of the species, seems to be the most successful way to portray vampires in series, because in television it’s important for people to want to invite the show back into their homes week after week.

  That’s where Buffy has offered viewers the best of both worlds. Even villainous vampires, such as the pre-chip Spike, are portrayed as having the capacity to love, and as being loyal to their intimates. The lead character is a Slayer and the vampires she hunts are unequivocally evil, but the first love of her life was the only vampire who had a conscience, and was able to control the demon within—for the most part. Angel took the appeal of the tortured soul to a new level. By combining the traditional Gothic elements of vampire lore with the modern twist of redemption, Buffy has further developed the ongoing mythology of vampires.

  While the classic elements of vampire mythology will undoubtedly endure in future films and series, as evidenced by Buffy, individual vampire characters will continue to diversify and grow in complexity because, at their core, they are simply a mirror into the dark side of our own hearts.

  .4.

  CAST BIOGRAPHIES

  As the series has evolved and matured, the characters populating Sunnydale have changed accordingly. Following are bios of the current main cast of characters.

  Sarah Michelle Gellar

  There’s a stigma attached to being a kid actor. In order for preschool age children to succeed in such a highly competitive business, they must be precocious beyond their years, willing to please, possess a premature ambition, and be cute as a button to boot.

  But the disapproval has less to do with the youngsters themselves than with the circumstances required for their having a career in the first place. All child actors must have at least one parent who at some point agrees to expose their son or daughter to the often ego-punishing world of show business. No matter how much a child maintains that they want to act, the fact is, unless the parent becomes part of the process, it simply won’t happen. Many kids profess the desire to be in showbiz; however, the majority are gently told they can do whatever they want to—once they are old enough to get to auditions on their own.

  The biggest criticism of child actors is what happens to them when they became adults. The film and television industries are littered with reminders—Dana Plato, River Phoenix, Todd Bridges, Danny Bonaduce, Corey Haim, to name just a few—of what can happen to young people subjected to the pressure of being the family’s primary breadwinner … of juggling the angst of growing up with the responsibilities of an adult job … of not only achieving success, but maintaining it.

  Some of the most vocal critics are former child stars themselves, such as The Donna Reed Show’s Paul Peterson—founder of A Minor Consideration (a group that advocates the rights of child performers)—who says the entertainment industry’s tendency to view people as disposable goods sets young people up for a devastating fall once they (literally) grow out of their careers.

  Of course, not all former child actors end up robbing dry-cleaners or overdosing on city sidewalks or marrying eight times and becoming a poster girl for the Betty Ford Clinic. Nor do all fail to make the transition to an adult career. Jodie Foster, Henry Thomas, Jerry O’Connell, and dozens of others are living proof that you can be a child actor, grow up into a relatively well balanced adult, and continue in your chosen profession. Sarah Michelle Gellar also can be added to that list of well-adjusted overachievers.

  Gellar (pronounced GELL-are, not GELL-er) has been a professional actor since she was six years-old, and she is a bit weary of people making assumptions about former child actors. “I’m tired of people who say, ‘Acting corrupts these young people,’” Gellar has said. “You know what? There are a lot of actors who have been working since a young age and they’re just fine. I was not meant to be in Little League or the local ballet school.

  “My mom was not living vicariously through me. It has always been my choice to act—and if my grades ever fell below an A, I had to stop working for a while. When I was old enough, it was my decision to go to college or pursue my career. If at any time I wanted to give it up, [my mother] would be behind me one hundred percent.”

  That said, it was actually an agent who first got the idea that Sarah had a face a camera could definitely love. Born April 14, 1977, in Manhattan, and raised on the Upper East Side, Sarah was discovered, in a Lana Turner moment, while eating lunch with her mother in a restaurant. “This woman walked up to me and asked if I’d like to be on television,” Gellar says. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, okay!’” Sarah was four years old and a would-be star was born.

  A short time later, Sarah got her first national exposure when she was hired to play Valerie Harper’s daughter in the CBS Movie of the Week, An Invasion of Privacy, which also starred Jeff Daniels. “The day I went in, I wa
s supposed to read with Valerie but she’d already gone home,” Sarah remembers. “But that was no problem; first I read my lines and then I read hers—in Valerie’s voice. I was hired on the spot.”

  Although she went on to be cast as Burt Young’s daughter in the 1983 feature Over the Brooklyn Bridge, and did a guest spot on the Tony Randall series Love, Sidney, Sarah worked mostly in commercials during those early years. She did over one hundred television spots, thirty of them for a long-running Burger King campaign.

  At the tender age of five, Sarah learned just how cutthroat the entertainment business was, when she was named in a civil lawsuit filed by McDonald’s against Burger King. Though a common practice now, the suit stemmed from Burger King openly daring to disparage rival McDonald’s for their skimpy burger patties. “Well, McDonald’s was very upset by this commercial,” explains Gellar, “so they turned around and sued Burger King, J. Walker Thompson, the advertising company that came up with the idea for the spot, and me. I couldn’t even say the word ‘lawyer’ and a few months later I was having to tell my friends, ‘I can’t play. I’ve got to give a deposition.’”

  But Sarah says the lawsuit was the least of her concerns at that age. Worse was her truth-in-advertising contractual obligation to only publicly endorse Burger King. “When you’re five, where do all of your friends have their birthday parties? Answer: McDonald’s. So there I was, going to birthday parties wearing a big straw hat and sunglasses.” The case, dubbed by the New York papers as “the Battle of the Burgers” was eventually settled out of court in 1982, and Sarah and her career sailed along untainted by the legal maneuvering.

  By 1986, Sarah’s career was gaining momentum. She played a little girl in the hospital on an episode of Spenser: For Hire (“Robert Urich was really wonderful to me”) and made her Broadway debut in the drama The Widow Claire, which was staged at Circle in the Square. Sarah played the role of Molly opposite a still–up-and-coming Matthew Broderick.

  “But then Ferris Bueller came out and Matthew left the show,” Sarah recalled. “He was replaced by Eric Stoltz. Then Eric’s film, Some Kind of Wonderful, came out and suddenly he was really big. And I became the most popular girl in school because I got to work with both of them.”

  But as positive and bright as her career was, Sarah’s home life was decidedly darker. Her mother, Rosellen, then a nursery-school teacher, and her father Arthur, a salesman, were in the throes of a crumbling marriage. As an only child, Sarah had no sibling to turn to for comfort.

  And although Sarah has steadfastly refused to discuss her parents’ split, an interview given by Arthur in 1994 strongly indicates Rosellen’s support and encouragement of her daughter’s acting was at least one cause of friction.

  Arthur, then an unemployed textile salesman, told Star magazine that he never wanted Sarah to go into show business because he worried about the effect it could have on her, having seen via some of his relatives what kinds of troubles life in the fast lane can bring. “I just wanted Sarah to have a normal life,” he said. “Kids in the business grow up too fast.”

  After thirteen years of marriage, Arthur and Rosellen divorced in 1987. For a while, Arthur maintained contact with Sarah, but by 1990, when she was just twelve, all communication had been broken off. Even though they lived in the same city, Sarah wouldn’t lay eyes on her father for many years to come.

  As late as 1994, Sarah would respond coldly whenever asked about her father. “My parents divorced when I was very young and I don’t see my real dad. We never got along, so when he left it was a much better environment. And he’s out of the picture. My mom’s fiancé is the one who sat in the front row at school recitals with the camera.” She was even harsher in TV Guide: “He is not a person who exists in my life. Just because you donate sperm does not make you a father. I don’t have a father. I would never give him the credit to acknowledge him as my father.”

  Despite his daughter’s apparent anger and resentment, Arthur maintained he held no grudges. “I love Sarah very much. And even though I haven’t seen her in years, there isn’t a night that goes by that I don’t think of her—but it’s too painful to even watch her on TV.”

  Sarah refused to discuss her father publicly. For that matter, Gellar was also closemouthed when her mom came and lived with her for a while. A friend let slip that Gellar had quietly reestablished contact with Arthur, though there was no indication it was a full-fledged, open-armed reunion.

  Whatever her relationship with her long-estranged father, it became moot in October 2001 when he was found dead in his Manhattan apartment, initially rumored to be a drug overdose. Police were called to the scene by a friend who’d reported that the sixty-year-old Gellar had been missing several days. They found him in bed with medication near his body. It was reported by friends that Arthur was undergoing cancer treatment and had suffered from depression, and it was determined he died from complications related to kidney cancer. Gellar steadfastly refused to make any public comment about her father’s death and reportedly did not attend his funeral.

  After her parents divorced, Sarah’s resentment toward anyone who questioned or criticized her mother or herself over her acting career, would be a recurring theme for many years. But whatever emotional toll it took, it did nothing to slow Sarah down; if anything, she sped up. While attending the exclusive Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School, located at 5 West 93rd Street, across Central Park from where she lived, Sarah was a bundle of nonstop activity.

  She was a competitive figure-skater for three years, ranking third in the New York State regional competition. “What was happening was, I was going to school, acting, skating, and taking Tae Kwon Do all at the same time. I would get up in the morning and head straight to the ice rink to practice. Then I’d go to school, then when school let out, I’d go on auditions, then take Tae Kwon Do classes in the evening.”

  Despite her amazing determination, stamina, ambition, and drive, Sarah eventually discovered she wasn’t superhuman. “No human being can keep up that kind of schedule, and I was cracking,” she admits. “So finally my mom stepped in. One day she sat me down and told me I could only do two things. One was school, so that left me the choice of picking the one thing that was my big love. And I chose acting.”

  Despite her talent, intelligence, and desire to fit in, Sarah was the class outcast during her junior-high years at Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School, surrounded by schoolmates under-enthused, and even more unimpressed—with her achievements as an actress, which by that time included parts in the features Funny Farm and High Stakes, where she played Sally Kirkland’s daughter.

  Sarah believes her professional achievements actually were resented by the other kids. “They were so hard on me. I never liked to talk about my acting because if I did, I was branded a snob. And if I didn’t, I was still a snob”—which made her become secretive about her extracurricular activities. “In 1990, I had more absences in the first month than you’re supposed to have in an entire year. I was telling them I had back problems and had to go to doctors all the time. I guess they believed me—until A Woman Named Jackie aired.”

  In that 1991 miniseries, Sarah played the young Jacqueline Bouvier. Besides being delirious at the opportunity to spend time away from the nightmare that was school, Gellar was excited to be involved in a project about the former First Lady. “I had always been fascinated by Jackie Kennedy, so to play her as a teenager was really a thrill,” Sarah says.

  The older Jackie was played by future Touched by an Angel star Roma Downey, to whom Sarah became instantly devoted. “I wanted to be just like Roma. Not just in the movie but in real life, too. If she sat down, so did I. If she walked, I walked. I tried to do everything she did. And fortunately, Roma was great about it. She didn’t mind me becoming her little shadow at all.”

  Peer problems aside, Sarah’s professional life was only getting better. She was a cohost on the series Girl Talk and traveled to Europe to film the internationally syndicated series The Leg
end of William Tell, which in some areas was known as Crossbow. The 1991 series starred Will Lyman as William Tell, who was searching for his wife and son. Lyman was fresh off the short-lived 1990 series Hull High, NBC’s failed attempt at a musical series.

  The Legend of William Tell was not picked up for any additional episodes, but Sarah wasn’t out of series work for long. In 1992, she appeared in Neil Simon’s play Jake’s Women at the Old Globe Theater in Boston. Next she was cast in Swan’s Crossing, a much-hyped syndicated teen soap opera that was produced by WOR in New York. It was Sarah’s first chance at ongoing national exposure and she went into the project with high hopes that it would be her breakout role.

  Swan’s Crossing debuted on June 29, 1992. According to the promotional material, the serial focused on the “lives, loves, and intrigues” of a dozen privileged New England teenagers and preteens, living in the fictitious coastal town of Swan’s Crossing, who “stir up scandal and excitement in their small town.”

  Sarah played Sidney Rutledge, the mayor’s scheming daughter. Among the other characters were the requisite woman-charmer, an evil ex-boyfriend, a former television star, and a young scientist working on formulating world’s first self-perpetuating rocket fuel. Sarah’s big chance didn’t last long. After just three months on the air, Swan’s Crossing ceased production on September 25, 1992. TV Guide’s soap columnist, Michael Logan, said bluntly. “Basically, it starred too many young people who couldn’t act.”

  The original episodes were rerun over the next three months and then, despite a fervent outcry from the few but hardcore fans, the show faded way. After Swan’s Crossing went off the air, Sarah shook off the disappointment and looked forward to her next chance at television notoriety, which came within a matter of months.