Why ’90s Star Hopes No One Ever Sees Canceled Reboot Pilot
The actress asked fans of her show to boycott any leaked footage.
Sarah Michelle Gellar is going scorched earth on the scrapped reboot of her popular ’90s hit, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Asked whether she would want fans to watch the reboot’s pilot, which was filmed by Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao, should it eventually leak, Gellar replied with an emphatic no.
On Wednesday, "Buffy" star Sarah Michelle Gellar asked fans to avoid looking at any leaked scripts or videos of her cancelled reboot.
YouTube/screengrab
“I hope it doesn’t. I actually hope it doesn’t,” Gellar, 48, told Page Six on Wednesday. “Because then everyone’s going to have an opinion on this and that. And pilots are not finished. It wasn’t done.”
“There are things you learn from it. And there are things you fix,” Gellar, who played Buffy Summers for seven seasons on the series, explained. “Usually, a pilot doesn’t air in its entirety, ever. So you use that information as a learning tool.”
Last week, Gellar found out that the reboot of her '90s hit had been cancelled by one Hulu executive.
Courtesy Hulu
The star acknowledged that the original Buffy pilot “had nothing to do with the show” it would later become.
This past weekend, Gellar learned that Hulu had cancelled Buffy: New Sunnydale, the reboot to her wildly popular ’90s TV show, while she was at the premiere for her new film, Ready or Not 2.
The actress was devastated, citing how heartbreaking it also was for Zhao, who was in the midst of celebrating an Oscar-winning weekend for her film Hamnet.
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“For them to call us on the Friday of what should have been Chloé’s victory lap for an incredible film, and my world premiere of something that I worked very hard for is...” Gellar said in an Instagram video, trailing off. “That says something.”
Chloé Zhao, who directed the pilot, learned of the cancellation on the same weekend as the Oscars, where her film "Hamnet" had eight nominations.
Isabel Infantes/REUTERS
On Tuesday, Gellar directly called out the one executive responsible: Disney Television Group President Craig Erwich, according to Deadline.
“We had an executive on our show who was not only not a fan of the original,” she said, “but was proud to constantly remind us that he had never seen the entirety of the series and how it wasn’t for him.”
“That’s very hard when you’re taking a property that is as beloved as Buffy, not just to the world, but to me and Chloé. So that tells you the uphill battle that we had been fighting since day one, when your executive is literally proud to tell you that he didn’t watch it,” Gellar added.
In her Wednesday interview, Gellar also called for fans to boycott a leaked script, which she claimed “isn’t correct.”
“That stuff is really unfortunate,” Gellar said. “And I ask fans, if you see scripts, if you see [the pilot] leaked, don’t watch it. Because you’re not getting our visions and all of that.”
Gellar instead asked fans to do two things: stream the original show on Hulu and watch her newest movie, Ready or Not 2.
“That’s what you can do right now,” Gellar concluded. “That’s all we can do right now.”
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