Do we like Sarah Michelle Gellar?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decent and on the right side, with a thin record on the planet and a lot of her good work covered only by older pieces.
Gellar is Buffy to a generation, and she still says she is proud of the show, though she has been blunt that the working conditions were far from ideal. Asked if the set was a good place to work, she said “Absolutely not.” She has also described it as an “extremely toxic male set” and said she will not tell her full story because she gets nothing out of it.
The big Buffy-era stoush was about her old boss, not her. In 2021 Charisma Carpenter alleged that Joss Whedon abused his power on the Buffy and Angel sets, and other cast members backed her, while Whedon's representative declined to comment. Gellar posted that she stood with “all survivors of abuse” and didn't want to be “forever associated with the name Joss Whedon.”
On the harm check, nothing turned up: no slide into conspiracy theories, no culture-war grifting, and no campaigning against anyone's rights. On LGBTQ+ people she has been consistently warm. She said she was glad to have “one more community that accepts me and loves me for me,” and that everything needs to be about inclusivity. I found nothing from her on climate or immigration either way, so that part of the record is thin.
The recent news is a career knock rather than a scandal. She co-developed a Buffy revival with director Chloé Zhao for Hulu, and she announced on Instagram in March that it had been cancelled. She later told People that an executive on the project had never watched the original, and at the Emmys she joked “Well, I guess we won't find out!” when Boreanaz raised the Buffy and Angel storyline.
The good stuff is practical rather than flashy. She has helped build a house with Habitat for Humanity, delivered meals for Project Angel Food and granted Make-A-Wish meetings while working on Buffy. She jokes she can't afford her own foundation, so she gets her hands dirty with existing ones. She also teamed up with Subaru on its Feeding America meals pledge during the pandemic.
The case against her is empty, which is why the score stays high. What keeps it short of a 9 or 10 is that most of the evidence is interviews and older charity pieces, with little on the planet or on her recent work choices. On what's out there, she's the Buffy fan's favourite and a friend to the queer community, and a safe one to cheer for.