Sarah Michelle Gellar

Gellar Morphed Into Tales

Sarah Michelle Gellar, who plays an entrepreneurial porn star in Richard Kelly’s upcoming SF apocalyptic comedy film Southland Tales, told SCI FI Wire that she originally auditioned for another role before getting the lead female part.

"I was originally playing Amy Poehler’s character, and Amy Poehler was playing my character," Gellar said in an interview on the film’s set in Manhattan Beach, Calif., last week. The character was a struggling actress who works as a waitress-and dies in the first half-hour of the movie.

"Richard called one day and said, ’You know, I want to pitch this movie to you,’" Gellar recalled of her first contact with Kelly (Donnie Darko). "And I said, ’Great. I’m going to Japan tomorrow [to work on The Grudge], and I’ll be back in two months.’ ... And he said, ’No. tomorrow.’ And I was like, ’I’m going to the airport.’ And he’s like, ’I’ll meet you there.’ And I’m like, ’You’re kidding, right?’ I didn’t even know him. ... He’s like, ’No, no, no!’ And I said, ’Well, could you just send me the script?’ And he says, ’No, no, no. I have to explain it to you. It’s visual. I have to show it to you.’ And I was like, ’Who is this crazy person?’ So then I went and had lunch with him ... that fateful day. I went and had lunch with him before I went to the airport, and he pitched this just spectacular idea, and my favorite part of this whole story was we must have met for about three hours and he brought video footage to show me, these visuals of colors and sketches and all this. And my character, ... she wants to be this actress, but she’s struggling, because she’s working at [California Pizza Kitchen], but she knows she has a greater gift, and her dad is supporting her, and she’s cutting an album. ... It’s so exciting. I get on the airplane to read it, and my character died in the first 30 pages in that draft. And I was like, ’I spent three hours, and I die in the first 30 pages?’ And it just showed how spectacularly rich Richard’s ideas were, because everything was so fully developed to him. And I signed on instantly, before I even read it."

Eventually, Kelly and Gellar decided her role should be bigger, and also that he needed to expand another character, a porn actress named Krysta Now, who at the time was being played by Poehler (Saturday Night Live). "He had this idea that the Krysta character would be in love with Boxer [Dwayne ’The Rock’ Johnson], and through different things we just sort of realized that Amy and I would probably be better off swapping," Gellar recalled. Southland Tales is currently in production with an eye to a 2006 release.