Joss Whedon's Sadistic Rule When Writing For Sarah Michelle Gellar On Buffy
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is fondly remembered for so many reasons. On the lighter side, it introduced us all to a valley-slang inspired dialect known as "Buffy speak" and gave us the enduringly heartwarming bonds between the members of the Scoobie Gang. But if "Buffy" was all jokes and wholesome fare, it wouldn't have become the cult hit it did, and it certainly wouldn't have gained a reputation for producing some of the best episodes of TV ever.
Just take a look at "The Body" from season 5. The episode opens with a one-take scene in which the titular slayer walks into her house to discover her mother's lifeless body laying on the couch. It's the episode show creator, "Avengers" director, and all-round prolific creative Joss Whedon considers the greatest thing he's ever done, and is also considered by many to be a standout moment in TV history generally.
But beyond specific emotional episodes or unforgettably creepy villains, "Buffy" was always tinged with darkness from the outset. Right from the get-go, when the Scoobies were fighting villains of the week that included giant insect women and invisible girls, the show was marked by tragedy — mainly because Buffy herself had no say in whether she was the slayer or not. Whedon's series took the "high school is hell" metaphor and ran with it, using the series' villains as allegories for the horrors of adolescence. But it also used the fact that Buffy was destined to be the slayer whether she liked it or not as an allegory for being a kid and feeling like you have a whole set of unreasonable expectations to live up to.
In that sense, the show's whole premise was based on the lead character suffering — a fact that certainly wasn't lost on Whedon himself.
'Buffy in pain, story more interesting'
Throughout its 1997-2003 run, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" put its title character through the wringer. By the seventh and final season, things had gotten downright miserable. Buffy was killed off in season 5, then resurrected in season 6, only to be shot in episode 20 of that same season before being saved by some magical intervention from Willow (Alyson Hannigan). Throughout that same season, Buffy endured an existential crisis, questioning who she was and reeling from the devastating experiences of previous seasons.
Sadly, as time went on, we learned the cast themselves, Sarah Michelle Gellar included, were actually suffering on what's been described as Joss Whedon's toxic set. As such, loving "Buffy" has become very complicated in light of these revelations, which also make this 2003 quote from Whedon all the more disturbing.
Asked by IGN about the darkness of season 6, the show creator explained that people "didn't respond" to an emotionally conflicted Buffy, saying it was like "they didn't have their anchor." But the really unsettling part came when he spoke about season 7:
"In season 7, it wasn't like we weren't going to put her through her paces. Buffy in pain is a staple of the show from season 1. As [co-executive producer David] Greenwalt and I told each other very early on — 'Buffy in pain, story more interesting. Buffy not in pain, story not interesting.' So we couldn't just have her be like, 'La-di-da, do-di-do, all is well,' for a season, because — hey, show not about that. The dark place we took her to was about, 'I'm accepting my power, my responsibility, and my leadership, and those are hard things to deal with.' So, inevitably, she got kind of bummed out, because that's how you tell the story."
Joss Whedon sounds like a fun guy
While it's true that Buffy enduring some sort of unbelievable suffering was a big part of how the show worked, it all just seems a bit sad in light of recent revelations. In "Joss Whedon: The Biography," author Amy Pascale explains how, after the first season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," Whedon "realized that he would have to take stronger control, to avoid the distracting behind-the-scenes drama of the first season." This, according to Pascale, involved the show creator shying away from "trying to be everyone's friend." Unfortunately, it also led Whedon to say unfortunate things like this on the record: "I respected those above me, and demand the same from those below me. I don't think there's anything wrong with that."
Well, in light of everything that's come out about the show's on-set culture and the multiple allegations of workplace misconduct and, in some cases, outright abuse, saying this kind of thing takes on a distinctly dark aspect. Even without any of that, imagine working for a guy who says things like this...
Anyway, the point is that Whedon, while in a unique position to understand his show more comprehensively than anyone else, also seemingly took things to a point where the "Buffy in pain, story more interesting" formula became a "cast and crew in pain, show better" formula. Just listen to this little anecdote from Pascale's book, in which Whedon recounts a Halloween episode where apparently the crew had "done it wrong": "Joss remembers how he yelled, 'Take him away, it doesn't work!' then realized, 'Wow, I actually just shouted that with genuine anger in my heart. My job is so awesome.'"
No wonder Sarah Michelle Gellar has no plans to ever return to "Buffy."