Movies - TV
Joss Whedon Created An Animated Buffy The Vampire Slayer Concept That Never Got Picked Up
By REBECCA POTTERS
In a four-minute teaser episode for “Buffy: The Animated Series,” a scantily clad Buffy (voiced by Giselle Loren and not Sarah Michelle Gellar) fights a vampire, chats with Willow, Xander, and Giles in the library, and subsequently fights a dragon. While the teaser definitely baited fans, the potential series was plagued by toxic masculinity and needlessly pitted its female leads against each other.
Joss Whedon, the creator of the original live action “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and the failed animated spinoff, described his confusion on why the latter never got picked up. “We wrote seven scripts [...] it was 'what could we not do [on the regular series].' They were really fun to write,” said Whedon. “We could not sell the show. We could not sell an animated 'Buffy,' which I still find incomprehensible.”
However, Sarah Michelle Gellar, who played Buffy in the live action show, did have strong opinions on why she refused the project — and it was due to Whedon. “For so long, I was on a set that I think was known for being an extremely toxic male set, and so that was ingrained in my head that that was what all sets were like, and that women were pitted against each other,” said Gellar.