The Buffy Episode That Left Sarah Michelle Gellar The Most 'Physically Exhausted'
Of all the episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," one of the most memorable and ambitious has to be the season 4 episode "Hush." A set of horrifying demons come to Sunnydale and steal the voices of the entire town, forcing the Scoobies to take them down while communicating through pantomime. Some of the actors thought that the episode would be a walk in the park — there would be fewer lines to memorize, after all — but it ended up being one of the most challenging episodes of the series.
Season 4 is one of the more aimless seasons of "Buffy" and is often considered to be one of the worst. As a coming-of-age series, Buffy leaving high school was a huge turning point for the show and left controversial series creator Joss Whedon feeling the need to shake things up. When the idea for a silent episode came to him, it seemed like the only way that he could break himself out of a creative rut and save himself from what he described as "hackdom."
"I'd been directing for three years," he recalled in an interview with IGN, "I'd directed, like, ten Buffys, and I was sort of falling into a very predictable visual pattern, which is what TV mostly does. It's radio with faces. I thought if I had no dialogue, I would be forced to tell the story visually. I couldn't fall into over, over, two-shot, because there would be no such thing."
The director was right to go through with it — the episode was a huge hit and all but saved the season from being totally forgettable. However, it was no small feat, and it presented a lot of huge challenges for himself, the cast, and the rest of the crew alike.
Gellar thought Hush would be easy
Whedon knew he had a great idea on his hands when he came up with the concept for "Hush," but he wasn't sure if he and his team at The CW would be able to execute everything he had in mind, which included some eerily silent Nosferatu-like figures that floated above the ground.
"I really thought I couldn't pull it off, to tell a story like that for that long," the director continued. "I thought either I wouldn't be able to write it, or once I did, people wouldn't be able to get it, or I wouldn't be able to convey it visually. It was sheer terror from start to finish and therefore the most fun imaginable."
When Sarah Michelle Gellar heard that she wouldn't have to learn any lines of "Buffy" in the week that she shot "Hush," she was thrilled. Unfortunately, the shoot didn't turn out to be the cakewalk she expected.
"I couldn't wait for the silent episode," she recounted at a reunion shoot with People. "Just a week of not having to learn lines ... it was so hard! It was probably one of the hardest episodes we've had to film. I was never so tired and physically exhausted."
Part of the reason why it was such a strenuous shoot was because Whedon took a very overbearing approach to the shoot. It ended up paying off — the episode was incredible — but it was definitely hard on the actors.
"Joss was so specific about direction," James Marsters, who plays Spike, chimed in. "I mean, like, every little moment. 'Nope, that was beautiful, but you need to do it half a second later than you did it.' It was all planned within an inch, this pantomime."
Why wouldn't Whedon let the actors improvise?
It might seem harsh that the "Buffy" actors were directed down to the second in "Hush," but Anthony Stewart Head, who plays Giles, insisted that there is a good reason. According to the actor, Whedon had tried to let the cast improvise in the past, but they weren't any good at it.
"[...] he basically said, 'OK, you're all in the library. I'm going to give you the chance to improvise because I'm not going to script this moment,'" Head recalled in an interview with TV Guide. "And we were all useless. Useless! To the point where we were in the auditorium and I'm doing the slideshow and that was all scripted because he said, 'I was thinking of you improvising this and you were so useless before that I've actually got to script the questions and basically I've got to write out every move and every moment in that scene because you can't improvise it.'"
The actors also had little to no time to prepare these scenes before they were shot. They usually received scripts ahead of the shoot, but according to Head, most of the script for "Hush" was just a "beat sheet," a rough outline of "ideas" and a breakdown of "the beats of the episode." As for whether this was a regular practice on network television, the actor says that this is totally "unheard of."
However, once they got on set, the direction was very clear — for better or for worse.
"He knew exactly what was going to happen down to doors opening and facial expressions and movement," added Amber Benson, who plays Tara. "It was very, very thorough always."
The Gentlemen scared the series regulars
But the main cast members weren't the only ones who had it rough on set. The actors who played the Gentlemen also worked very long hours. According to the lead Gentleman Doug Jones, prosthetics took four hours to apply.
"There's a mold maker that has to take a life cast of us and then there's the foam runners and the painters that actually pre-paint the pieces in the shop and then they go to the set and that's where makeup artist Todd McIntosh would apply it to me," he explained to TV Guide. "So there was a different person for each department that would make them, apply them. They had a contact lens tech on set that would just take care of my eyes."
Of course, Jones is no stranger to prosthetics — he's appeared as a monster in many a film, including Guillermo del Toro's "The Shape of Water." Still, the Gentlemen were so scary that it affected their social life on set. Even the series regulars — who saw terrifying demons on set every day — were totally afraid of them.
"No one wanted to sit at lunch with them," Benson recalled at a cast reunion with People. "I felt really bad."
However, Jones said he felt totally welcome on the "Buffy" set, even by Gellar, the star of the show. "It was very much established that [Gellar] was number one on the call sheet, and the crew was very protective of her," he admitted to TooFab. "But you could tell that the entire crew and Sarah loved us Gentlemen. Loved us. And I guess when it comes to guests on the show, you know, the series regulars don't always connect with all of them [...] but she loved us."
Some actors had an easier time being silent than others
Not everyone had a hard time on the set of "Hush." This was the very first episode of "Buffy" for Benson, whose character appears for the first time and receives only a brief introduction before falling completely silent. At the time, Benson wasn't sure how long she'd be in the series. In fact, she didn't even know that she would be mute for almost her entire time in her onscreen debut.
"I didn't [know] actually," the actress admitted to TV Guide. "It was kind of a surprise. Once I booked it, it was like, 'Oh, by the way, half of this is totally silent.'"
Benson didn't mind that her character was quiet, probably because she herself was a woman of few words. Her co-star Anthony Stewart Head added that his first impression of her was "very shy, much like Tara." The actress was skilled at communicating without using her words, which is probably why she was cast in the first place.
"It was awesome because I'm not the kind of actor who likes to go, 'Oh, I have so many lines! This is awesome," she continued. "I'm the actor that goes, 'Oh, I have the least amount of stuff to do. This is awesome.' So I didn't have to say anything. It was really wonderful. I just got to emote."
The actress' incredible chemistry with Alyson Hannigan made her a fan favorite and a series mainstay. Benson has since gone on to write an audiobook spin-off called "Slayers: A Buffyverse Story" in which several of her co-stars, including Head, are reprising their original roles. However, even though Benson had a great week on set, it still proved to be a difficult shoot for the rest of the cast.
Making Hush was hard on the crew, too
"Hush" was a challenging shoot for the "Buffy" cast, but it was arguably even harder on the crew. Making it appear as though the Gentlemen were hovering above the ground was no easy feat, achieved by the incredible special effects team. Wide shots required a rig with a track and a harness, while close-ups enlisted a crew member to push the actors around on a wheeled platform, Jones told TV Guide.
But the production team wasn't the only ones kicked into high gear. The post-production crew, including composer Christophe Beck, were also in a mad dash to create a polished finished product.
"It was five days and nights," he chimed in. "It was a lot of sleep deprivation to get this done ... Even though it was physically and technically a little torturous, I was into it from beginning to end. There was also the feeling that among the crew, especially the post-production crew, that we were making something special here."
In fact, even getting the episode off the ground was a struggle. The network feared that a soundless episode would fail to keep the audience's attention, according to Jones. The episode also required an unprecedented amount of brief cutaway shots for narrative exposition that would cost the network precious time and money.
"When we produced this it was unlike anything we'd done," Whedon said in a DVD extra behind-the-scenes featurette. "This, just this small thing, cut away to 'small boy in a house somewhere', to 'an old man in a house somewhere'. These are all things you have to build the room or find it; you have to get the actor, you have to — they're all things that you don't do as much. We'll light entire spaces in this and only use them for a few seconds, and in television, you just don't have time to do that."
The struggle was worth it in the end
Despite the many challenges that came with shooting "Hush," Whedon knew that it had major potential as a creative vehicle to express something that none of his work had in the past.
"[...] once I got started on it, I realized that what I had to talk about was communication and how words get in the way, as somebody once sang," the series creator told IGN. "When we stop talking, truths start coming out."
The episode concentrates dynamics and characters down to their essence and provides plenty of room for comedy, drama, and horror in its purest, visual form. Like the musical episode, this ambitious story was definitely worth all of the trouble that it presented. These two episodes were easily two of the most challenging for the cast and crew, but they are also top-rated by fans, per IMDb. "Hush" also earned Whedon an Emmy nomination for his direction, along with Michael Gershman, who earned a nomination for his cinematography on the episode.
The season 4 episode is easily one of the best in the series, from the terrifying demons to the potent themes to the slapstick comedy. The cast and crew were certainly swinging big, but it's safe to say they knocked it out of the park.