Though Sarah Michelle Gellar is disappointed about Hulu scrapping Chloé Zhao’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” reboot, she hopes the pilot they shot actually never sees the light of day.
During an appearance on Page Six’s “P6 Radio” show on Wednesday, hosts Danny Murphy and Evan Real told Gellar that they hope the pilot leaks so fans can see what the show, titled “Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale,” would have been like. But Gellar disagrees.
“I actually hope it doesn’t,” she said. “Because then everyone’s going to have an opinion on this and that, and pilots are not finished. It wasn’t done, right? It’s not like we did a season and finished it and then they shelved it. It’s not like when they made ‘Batgirl’ the movie, right, and then didn’t show it.”
On Wednesday, Variety exclusively reported that Gellar’s iconic character, Buffy Anne Summers, was barely in the pilot episode of “New Sunnydale.” Instead, the shooting draft of the pilot — which was obtained by Variety — introduced an entirely new set of characters, led by a new teenage Slayer played by Ryan Kiera Armstrong. Buffy appeared only at the end and had one line.
Gellar continued that the show “made a pilot on purpose because there’s some new characters” and “there’s things you learn from it and there’s things you fix.”
“Usually, a pilot doesn’t air in its entirety ever,” she said. “It’s a learning tool. I mean, the original ‘Buffy’ pilot was nothing to do with the show. It was a different Willow, I mean it’s a very different show. But those are learning tools and that’s what a pilot is.”
On “P6 Radio,” Gellar said that one version of the script circulating online is “actually not correct” and urged fans not to read it.
“That stuff is really unfortunate and I ask fans, if you see scripts, if you see it leaked — don’t watch it. Because you’re not getting our vision and all of that,” she said.
This past weekend, Gellar was the one to deliver the news to fans that the show had been scrapped in an Instagram video. “I am really sad to have to share this, but I wanted you all to hear it from me. Unfortunately, Hulu has decided not to move forward with ‘Buffy: New Sunnydale,’” she said. Gellar, who is currently making the press rounds her new film “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come,” has since blamed a Hulu executive for quashing the reboot.
“We had an executive on our show who was not only not a fan of the original, but was proud to constantly remind us that he had never seen the entirety of the series and how it wasn’t for him,” she told People magazine Monday. “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.”
Reflecting on speaking out, Gellar told “P6 Radio”: “I’m not normally the one who says everything, but in this instance, for these fans it’s more than just a show, right? It’s in our DNA. And I think it deserves respect. And when I don’t see it being given the respect, then I have to stand up for that because that’s important to me.”
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