Sarah Michelle Gellar

Gellar Has Slayed Her Last Vampire

April 3, 2004 - Birmingham Post

Sarah Michelle Gellar returns to the role of Mystery Inc’s Daphne having just said goodbye to a character she’s been playing for the past eight years. Buffy The Vampire Slayer has finally staked her last blood sucker, but while she misses the show she admits it was time to call it a day.

’I could have stayed but it was important for me that the show go out while it was on top. It had become a cult phenomenon and I didn’t want to see Buffy fighting vampires from her wheelchair, staking them with my wooden cane! We started in High School and we got to college and by the end Buffy had basically become mother to 400 children with all these Slayerettes. I’d be coming down the stairs saying ’girls, girls, put your sleeping bags away, you make breakfast.’ I’d become Edna Garrett on Facts of Life! I’ll miss it but no one can ever take that way from me. It will be mine for the rest of my life.’

And, as Scooby-Doo screenwriter James Gunn discovered, it’s certainly left a lasting legacy in other ways too. ’We’re good friends, but she got really mad at me for writing the scene in which Daphne has to fall into the giant ball and roll around. She was not happy with rolling around and when she got out all her years of vampire slaying paid off because she kicked my a**. No, really, she physically beat me up, I was surprised how hard she can punch.’