by Matt St Clair
from Sarah Michelle Gellar's active Instagram account
Happy 45th, Sarah Michelle Gellar !!!
As a way of celebrating this marvelous occasion, we’ll be taking a look at the three projects that came during her star-making year in 1997 and asserted her place in the scream queen pantheon along with such names as Jamie Lee Curtis, Adrienne Barbeau, and Neve Campbell. The best one to start off with is the series that featured her career-defining role: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. What started off as a mid-season replacement for the show Savannah on the WB became a real game-changer for the landscape of television...
Buffy may have a more complicated legacy now due to the actions of the show’s biggest Big Bad of all: creator Joss Whedon. However, the work that the actors, especially Gellar, brought to the table shouldn’t be overlooked.
As the titular heroine Buffy Summers, a high school student juggling both living a normal adolescent life and fulfilling her duties as the Slayer who combats supernatural forces at nighttime, Gellar is a force of magnetism, wit, and vulnerability. Each episode, Buffy always takes names and kicks all sorts of demonic butt. Yet, there are still heartbreaking moments where we see that despite being a superhuman fighter, she’s still a young, frail teenager.
One of those times is in the season one finale “Prophecy Girl” where Buffy is informed that she’s destined to sacrifice herself fighting The Master (Mark Metcalf). Horrified at this revelation, she lashes out, saying she’s abandoning her Slayer duties. She eventually defeats the Master after being resurrected and would continue fulfilling her destiny as the Slayer. But because her battle with the forces of darkness is a never-ending matter of life and death, the doomed divination she received stresses how she’s in it for the long haul.
That moment is also one of many where Sarah Michelle Gellar’s performance warranted Emmy recognition. When it comes to which one is her finest hour, it might just be her paralytic portrait of grief in the Season Five episode “The Body.” The above glimpse of her shocked face after she screams “We’re not supposed to move the body!!” is as frightening as any supernatural monster. It’s not undead creatures she’s dealing with, but a real-life occurrence that hammers down the restrictions of her ability to save everyone who crosses her path.
Emmy or no Emmy, Gellar’s performance as Buffy Summers would still go on to inspire a varying range of academic studies and hold a strong place in pop culture.
Gellar’s character in I Know What You Did Last Summer, which came out seven months after Buffy’s premiere, similarly possesses her own lasting legacy. While Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) is the film’s protagonist, it’s Gellar’s Helen Shivers whose star shines brightest. More than the typical sexually active best friend often found in slasher pictures, Helen Shivers is both written and portrayed with refreshing depth.
Once a killer fisherman targets her and her friends a year after a fateful accident that shatters their lives, Helen proves herself as a resourceful heroine. For example, as her town’s 4th of July parade takes place, Helen willingly uses herself as bait to draw the killer out. However, because she is the sidekick who breaks the “no sex” rule in the slasher genre, Helen ended up having to meet the fisherman’s hook despite her iconic chase scene offering a glimmer of hope that she might survive. Nevertheless, the articles in praise of the Croaker Queen still being written are a testament to how treasured the character and Gellar’s performance are.
After I Know What You Did Last Summer became a smash hit, grossing $125M worldwide against a $17 million budget, then came her small role in Scream 2. Gellar’s casting as sorority sister Casey “CiCi” Cooper is a form of stunt casting in line with Janet Leigh in Psycho and also, Drew Barrymore in the first Scream. One where the filmmakers cast a huge name and kill their character off early to shatter audience expectations -- “Oh! If this person goes, then anybody can.”
Within her limited role, Gellar gets to play into the franchise’s trademark self-referential nature by engaging in a film class banter over the nature of sequels and whether they’re always inferior to their predecessors. Plus, her phone call scene is one the franchise’s best. The way Ghostface hisses, “Don’t forget to set the alarm!!” as he’s on the phone with her still sends chills down my spine.
Along with Scream 2, Gellar closed out her breakthrough year with the second season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Since her banner 1997, Gellar would have a flourishing film career thanks to pictures like the erotically charged teen drama Cruel Intentions, where she gives an against-type performance as the manipulative Kathryn Merteuil, and the commercially successful English language remake The Grudge.
Nowadays, Gellar keeps a lower profile, doing an occasional voice or guest star role on television with the sitcom The Crazy Ones being her last major show. Hopefully, a more grand screen return will be on the horizon. But if not, her career run still speaks for itself. Sarah Michelle Gellar has managed to successfully carry out the will of Helen Shivers: Serving her country through artistic expression.
Which Sarah Michelle Gellar performance is your favorite? And if you're a Buffy fan, what's your favourite season?