The Award Winning Actress That Almost Played Buffy In Buffy The Vampire Slayer
No one can play Buffy Summers, the girl chosen by fate to be a vampire Slayer, better than Sarah Michelle Gellar. She's not the only one who's tried though.
For starters, Gellar is actually the sophomore Slayer — Buffy was first played by Kristy Swanson in the original "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" movie from 1992 (that's been soundly displaced by the TV series in pop culture). For the TV series, Charisma Carpenter originally auditioned for Buffy, but ultimately played Queen Bee Cordelia Chase instead, the part that Gellar turned down. The whole point of Cordelia is that she's what Buffy was before she became the Slayer (an acerbic popular girl), so casting Gellar and Carpenter made sense. In another world, they could pull off each others' parts.
Carpenter wasn't the only runner-up to play Miss Summers. Back in 2001, when "Buffy" was still ongoing and sensation, Natasha Lyonne appeared on "The Howard Stern Show" alongside her "American Pie" co-stars Tara Reid and Alyson Hannigan (who also starred in "Buffy" as witchy sidekick Willow).
Stern asked if Lyonne was the "first choice" to play Buffy and, as Hannigan's jaw dropped, Lyonne confirmed this. "When the WB first started, they asked me to do any of the shows, 'Dawson's Creek' and 'Buffy'" Lyonne recounted. "I was 16 and I told them the only thing I'd want to do is some Carol Burnett sketch show for the WB, but then I decided I did not want to be committed when I was 16 years old."
Lyonne debuted as a child actor in "Pee Wee's Playhouse" in 1986 and she's kept acting since. Turning down "Buffy" (presumably in 1995-1996, based on the show's production timeline and Lyonne's age) freed up her to appear in movies such as "The Slums of Beverly Hills," "But I'm A Cheerleader," and the aforementioned "American Pie."
Natasha the Vampire Slayer?
Following a struggle with addiction, Lyonne came back into the spotlight (in a good way) in the 2010s and has recently led two different genre TV shows: time-travel comedy "Russian Doll" and mystery series "Poker Face." An Emmy has so far eluded her despite several nominations, but she won two Screen Actors Guild ensemble awards for "Orange is the New Black" and also a Television Critics Association Award for "Poker Face."
I adore Natasha Lyonne, no two ways about it, but could she have pulled off the Slayer? Comedy is essential to "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" and Lyonne definitely has that skill. Both Nadia in "Russian Doll" and Charlie in "Poker Face" often let their sentences trail off and are befuddled by the absurd, but brush it off and get the job done — just like Buffy. Lyonne's blonde, straight-haired look as teenage lesbian Megan Bloomfield in "But I'm A Cheerleader" is also Buffy-esque. While Lyonne hadn't made this film yet when she was offered Buffy, it shows the potential to play a cheerleader who didn't quite fit was always inside her.
That said, Lyonne is a New Yorker, born and raised — you can hear it in her accent. Her voice wasn't as husky in the 1990s as it is now, but compared to Gellar or Carpenter, she's still got too much New York punk edge to pass as a valley girl.
Basically, I think Natasha Lyonne could have pulled off Buffy (who knows what her career today would look like if she said yes), but I'm not rueful that Sarah Michelle Gellar wound up in the part instead.