Sarah Michelle Gellar recalls working on “extremely toxic male set” for years
While Gellar did not name disgraced Buffy The Vampire Slayer director Joss Whedon, other actors made similar allegations about his behavior
Aux News Sarah Michelle Gellar
Sarah Michelle Gellar certainly knows how to vanquish villainous creatures on screen, but in a recent panel, she revealed that she was dealing with them—or at least one in particular—behind the scenes as well.
“For so long, I was on a set that I think was known for being an extremely toxic male set,” Gellar said during TheWrap’s recent Power of Women Summit. “And so that was ingrained in my head that that was what all sets were like, and that women were pitted against each other—that if women became friends, then we became too powerful, so you had to keep that down.”
While Gellar, who starred as Buffy Summers in the ‘90s mega-hit Buffy The Vampire Slayer, did not explicitly name director Joss Whedon in her comments, it is not hard to read between the lines. Last year, multiple actors such as Buffy co-star Charisma Carpenter and Justice League’s Gal Gadot and Ray Fisher accused the director of “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable” behavior on set, such as threatening their careers and calling a then-pregnant Carpenter “fat.” (Whedon denied these claims and referred to himself as “one of the nicer showrunners that’s ever been” in a responding Vulture profile.)
While Gellar has remained largely silent on the allegations thus far, she did write “while I am proud to have my name associated with Buffy Summers, I don’t want to be forever associated with the name Joss Whedon,” in a 2021 Instagram post.
In her recent comments, however, she took the opportunity to praise the supportive coworkers she’s experienced in the proceeding years. “Now that I’ve had this opportunity to work with so many more women and men that support women as well, I realized how easy an experience it can be,” she said. “Unfortunately, we’re still in that place where all of those departments a lot of times need to be women for us to have a voice.”
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“Of course, I benefited tremendously so didn’t need to say anything.”
Yes. We can always find a way to blame the women when the men behave badly.
I have no doubt the commenter is an unimpeachable moral paragon in all toxic situations just like everyone but the bad Other People.
Seems more like they are saying she kept silent about this because she benefited.Kinda like the women in Hollywood who knew exactly what Harvey Weinstein was and continued to work with him. They put their careers over other women, who do we blame for that? No man forced that.
This. Though to be fair, men look the other way on everything if it’ll help them advance.
I’m sure that was part of it. Whedon could treat Carpenter like crap because she wasn’t essential to either Buffy or Angel, but if SMG left, the show would pretty much be over, so he probably treated her better.
Valerie Harper once thought as you do…
People in charge of toxic workspaces play the same “divide and conquer” game SMG is talking about. She was younger than most of the other cast when the show started (19 to their mid-20s), so she couldn’t hang out with them when they all went to the bar after work. Add in a boss who would praise her, knowing she was his meal ticket, then tell her that the others hated her and were jealous and that’s why they weren’t spending time with her (this is speculation based on observation of previous workspaces). It’s easy not to see what’s going on with other actors, especially on other sets (Carpenter’s worst experiences were from her time on ATS) and dismiss anything you hear about on your own set as exactly what you were warned about by someone who claimed he had your best interests in mind. Meanwhile the same toxic leader is doing a number on you, telling you to lose more weight and be on top of more, and you’re going to be in survival mode because at that stage in your career, he’s your meal-ticket too. (We know some of this because FPJ and Whedon almost came to blows over how SMG was on the edge of a breakdown from the stress.)Like she said, it was toxic, and part of the toxicity is having no spare energy to even notice what’s happening to other people.
People in charge of toxic workspaces play the same “divide and conquer”
game SMG is talking about. She was younger than most of the other cast
when the show started (19 to their mid-20s), so she couldn’t hang out
with them when they all went to the bar after work. Add in a boss who
would praise her, knowing she was his meal ticket, then tell her that
the others hated her and were jealous and that’s why they weren’t
spending time with her (this is speculation based on observation of
previous workspaces).
My understanding, from having a thirdhand connection to someone who worked on Buffy, is that this is basically correct—except that by the end he didn’t have to lie about so-and-so hating so-and-so. Eventually, it seems, his high-school mean-girl games—what Gellar refers to as “women . . . pitted against each other”—splintered the cast into cliques that genuinely didn’t get along, till you had actresses screaming the c-word at each other on set and refusing to work together.
Whedon could treat Carpenter like crap because she wasn’t essential to
either Buffy or Angel, but if SMG left, the show would pretty much be
over, so he probably treated her better.
Yes. And – though this seems hard to pull off – he could very well have kept mistreatment of Carpenter from Gellar for most if not all of Carpenter’s tenure. Not saying that’s what happened, but that’s pretty classic abusing behavior, right?
The really bad stuff Charisma experienced was after she had moved over to Angel. It’s completely believable that SMG wouldn’t have known what was going on over there, especially once the shows were on different networks.
Yes, because how can we possibly allow women to benefit in their career without being made to suffer at the same time.
Oh, you women and your “voices”!
She has a case of the vapors!
I enjoy the commentaries that often accompany a tv series in DVD collections and I always found it extremely odd that Gellar never recorded one or even participated in a group commentary. I kept thinking she was being held hostage somewhere. It was creepy af because she was seldom even mentioned by the cast either. They always praised her for “finding her mark (and knowing where the light was).” That was it.I began to suspect that either no one could stand her or that they were giving her props that she didn’t really deserve. I wanted badly to like the character but Whedon insisted on making her one of the dumbest characters in the show, who couldn’t even demand why her Watcher was well paid while she had to work at a ‘burger’ joint to pay the rent.
They always praised her for “finding her mark (and knowing where the light was). That sounds like the acting equivalent of “Yeah, he was good, he showed up mostly on time.” for an office worker.
Buffy might not have been the brightest, but the slayer industry is hardly the only place where management is well paid but the people reporting to them not so much (also *was* Giles well paid? He seemed to have to take side jobs as a librarian or run a magic shop to get by). She should have asked Giles if there were courses she could take that would make her eligible to promotion to Watcher.
Giles seemed to be doing ok, but remember that he was going through something of a mid-life crisis and suddenly he desperately needed a fancy sportscar to show off. He wanted a LIFE for himself – a home a girlfriend, etc.. He wasn’t very sympathetic to Buffy’s needs, though. I thought it was sad that he so adamantly resisted acting as Buffy’s surrogate father when a relationship like that might have been perfectly appropriate. Not doing that left her open to Angel’s influence, imo.
Jesus… it was a tv show, my guy. I think you take it a bit too seriously and give it far too much thought.
That episode is terrible.
I assume you mean “Doublemeat Palace”? I don’t get why people have a problem with it. If anything it seemed to be a return to the heights of early Buffy where the point was to use the monsters as analogies for real life problems (Willow naively agreeing to meet with a predator she met on an Internet chat room that turns out to be a cyber demon for example). Dealing with crappy fast food jobs is another real thing young people have to deal with.
It’s mostly just one of the more convenient targets for people’s problems with all of Season 6, where Whedon later admitted he liked each individual idea of dark, depressing stories so much that he didn’t consider maybe they shouldn’t ALL be happening at the same time.
When Season 6 first aired, I couldn’t have agreed more with that assessment, but when I watched the DVD’s later, I actually found Season 6 was mostly fine. It wasn’t nearly as dark and depressing as it had felt week to week. It’s actually one of my favorite seasons now.
Too heavy handed, also not funny
I really loved that episode. It was literally ‘don’t trust strangers you meet on the internet’ with the added ‘because they might be a literal demon’ tacked on the end.
Doublemeat Palace? god yes, it was bad. But then there was all of the Super Hero/Villain sex to offset the storyline and the ‘Big Bad’ ended up looking like a giant penis. Whedon loves to play with cliches – but often in ways that screamed “See? I’m a feminist!!”
Xander/Anya wedding is the worst episode, followed by Bad Fish.
You it the nail on the head. “Hell’s Bells just makes me angry.
Incorrect. “Beer Bad” is the worst episode.
she rejected the authority of the council in season 3 (senior year of high school) and Giles was fired even before that.
it’d be a little odd to ask them for money years after that (she was working in the burger joint season 6)
I completely forgot that part of the storyline. Maybe because thinking of the council is so abhorrent.
I think a review of Keanu Reeves as Hamlet in Winnipeg said that he remembered all his lines and in the right order.B r u t a lthe harshest ever was Dorothy Parker saying Katherine Hepburn ran the gamut of emotions from A to B
If there was ever a time for a revival of The Critic, it’s definitely now. The takedowns would be perfect.OTOH, it would probably stink.
When reminded later, she said she loved Katherine Hepburn, people just expect her to say clever, cutting things and they stick.
Reviews can be so unnecessarily mean, but then I’ve done some cranky ones myself. Still, the thought of Reeves doing Hamlet has me wondering whose idea that was, lol.
yet Keanu Reeves walks among us.
Reminds me of the commentary track for the Alice Cooper’s obscure attempt to make a midnight movie back in the ‘70s.
It’s the original Alice Cooper group, and Alice is praising them on the commentary: “There’s Dennis Dunaway, fantastic bass player, great guy. Neil Smith, one of the best drummers ever. Glen Buxton, RIP, we miss you.
…
There’s Michael Bruce.”
I didn’t know any of this, haha! Thanks. It’s still worth hanging out here at the AVClub.
Anyone who thinks Buffy was dumb didn’t pay attention to the show
Because, and I don’t know if you noticed this, the Watchers Council were villains. To them the Slayer was a tool to be used and discarded. A weapon to be pointed and unleashed to kill and, if they love long enough, undergo a rigged test at 18 to have them killed so a newer more easily controllable weapon can be called.
Wasn’t those seasons after Joss Whedon left the show and Marti Noxon took over? I like Buffy as much as the next 40 year old but they really didn’t know what to do once Dawn showed up. No one wanted to see the gang deal with social services or have a Very Special Episode about how drugs are bad mmmkay.
Somewhere in the middle of season 5 they started writing the characters as closer to the actors’ ages; no one was a convincing 21-year-old at that point. But then you had a bunch of implied 30-year-olds who weren’t really working and were still going to the Bronze. They never really got a handle on more adult stuff.
There has yet to be a show set in high school that transitioned to post-high school well. The beginning of the show was a sendup of the trope of the innocent teen girl who’s more powerful than she imagined. But that’s not a thing with adult, employed, women. So it became what if the gang from Friends fought monsters and now Buffy’s a mom. The monsters stopped representing anything and the show thought they needed to up the stakes and have an overarching mythos and that stopped working around the 4th season.
Low fantasy (where it’s basically our normal world but with magic) is always tricky with adult characters for these reasons. X-Files worked because the investigations were their jobs, and because the long-running arc centered on enough post-Cold War spy stuff to balance the sci-fi. I knew things were “off” in the Xander/Anya wedding episode. The core characters were supposed to be 21 but everyone involved had seemingly forgotten that. I think the “dark academia “ literary genre has finally figured out how to make the college years interesting: you lean into secret societies and indulge our perverse interest in the wealthy, brilliant elite. Media in the 90s had a hard time depicting people who were notably smart but not nerdy, which hampered college stories.
Gellar was like 22 in Season 5.
She was 24 in the finale when they put her in those awful wide leg sweatpants that kept crawling up her butt. They were aging her up to match Nicholas and Alyson who were 29/30 and looked it.
In the season 7 finale? Yeah.
No, season 5. Why are you arguing with me about basic arithmetic?
When it aired. She was 23 when it was filmed. So, I was off by a year. I thought she was a year younger.
Why is the post you responded to grayed out
Whedon did invite a steady group of pals to both write and direct shows, even from the beginning, I think. Maybe that was part of the show’s success. Each person gave it a little innovation and flavor. But yeah, trying to keep both a superhero story and a family drama in constant play did seem to get very messy at times. I’d have to actually look up who directed what, when. I think you may be right. Whedon was very invested in the “Angel” series and Marti would have been the obvious choice.
I was not Noxon’s biggest fan when she was a writer on Buffy, but I think she gets something of a bad rap for supposedly taking over and ruining the show in its later seasons. (To the point that she even jokes about it herself; her Twitter bio is “I ruined Buffy and I will RUIN YOU TOO.”)Joss did pull back from Buffy in season 6 and leave some of the day-to-day showrunning duties to Noxon, but he was never off the show entirely. And the things that went wrong that season had little to do with someone failing to stitch up the little details from day to day. What happened is that the writers saw their entire plan for the year drop out from under them at the last possible second: around the time that the midseason episode “Wrecked” went into production, the Dark Willow arc, which was meant to make up the entire back half of the season, was pushed to the last three episodes, and the writers had to scramble to put that story into a holding pattern and fill ten episodes with new material they hadn’t been planning for. My understanding is that Alyson Hannigan balked at doing an extended villain arc, though I don’t know if that’s ever been publicly confirmed. But the writers have confirmed in interviews over the years that the storyline was pushed—which explains why so much of the latter half of season 6 feels sort of half-assed and dreary, with the Crack Magic storyline used to pad out Willow’s storyline feeling particularly awkward and bullshitty.Anyway, my point is, a change that huge—restructuring the entire villain arc of the season—was not something Noxon could’ve carelessly slipped into the show while Whedon wasn’t paying attention. Joss would obviously have been involved, and even back then it struck me as kinda shitty that he seemed willing to let Marti take the fall for it.
The other thing they always praised her for was professionalism and knowing her lines. One of them, Michelle Trachtenberg, I believe, told a story about showing up to set with their script in hand, and their lines unmemorized, and SMG slapped it out of her hands and told her never to show up again without her lines memorized.
I get the impression though, from things that various female cast members have said over the years that Whedon purposely created a divide between SMG and the other female cast members so they wouldn’t all share stories and team up.
Whedon was effusive with praise for SMG in all his commentaries (and Alyson Hannigan)
“I began to suspect that either no one could stand her or that they were giving her props that she didn’t really deserve.”So, you’re an asshole.
“I wanted badly to like the character but Whedon insisted on making her one of the dumbest characters in the show, who couldn’t even demand why her Watcher was well paid while she had to work at a ‘burger’ joint to pay the rent.”
1) In what world is he “well paid”?
2) Why does her not confronting him about your stupid complaint make her dumb?
I sympathize with her if she had a bad experience, but she didn’t really explain much about what went down that was wrong other than vagueness about women being pitted against each other. But in my experience women don’t need to help of a man to go against each other.
So I’d be curious what a “toxic male set” was, and also be curious if, in this modern era, there are “toxic female sets” too?
My sister was an assistant in the first season and then a little in whatever season Seth Green was on. In that first season, she was kind of chummy with everyone but she’d get a lot of talks and notes on her performance especially, so as the season wore one she was spending more and more time in her trailer trying to prepare, trying to get everything just right, since whedon and other were really coming down on her.By the time the Seth Green season rolled around, the atmosphere was a lot different, everyone else seemed to be having a lot of fun, they’d always sign autographs and hang out wherever they were shooting, (they did a lot of highschool shoots and the teens loved them) Sarah would come out a little bit and just apologize immediate saying she had to prepare and go back into her trailer. I think it really warped SMG’s perception of her craft.
Sarah was notorious for trying to keep her regular life separate from the show and not really creating any bonds with the cast. It’s kind of like Topher Grace with that 70s show. It’s not that they didn’t get along with their cast members but they had a work as work approach to their jobs. A commentary with Sarah would have been hella dry for the show. Buffy commentaries were always more producer and writer based anyway. I honestly don’t remember any actors doing commentary for the show. If so, I’m sure it was minimal.
Her “Watcher” was not being paid at that point.
Just say “Joss Whedon”, Sarah. It’s okay.
When Whedon killed off Tara, trotting out the tiredest (and cruelest) of lesbian tropes, I knew that he was a monster at his core. A belief reinforced by the creation of Dollhouse. I love Buffy and always will, but that man is dead to me.
you mean when he treated the lesbian couple the same way he treated many heterosexual relationships on the show? what a monster!
Lesbian characters can’t be killed off?
AS OTHERS HAVE NOTED, NO RELATIONSHIP ON THE SHOW (OR ANGEL, FOR THAT MATTER) WENT WELL FOR LONG. TARA WASN’T EVEN THE FIRST LOVE INTEREST TO DIE. THIS PARTICULAR WHEDONISM BECAME A TROPE PEOPLE WERE TIRED OF WELL BEFORE HIS BEHAVIOR WAS OUTED.
She has got some NERVE.Whedon’s mindfuck parties where he turned the cast against each other were legendary – but Gellar was front and center for alllllll of it, and was the main instigator. She LOVED it.
Fuck you, you know SHIT.
What proof do you have Sarah instigated it? Genuinely curious as I’ve never heard this before.
Wow, what a brave hero!
And yet Whedon had the reputation of being a women’s director on the set. How did that whopper get set in stone?
Because Buffy was an explicitly feminist TV show at the time when media, especially aimed at young girls, was sexist garbage. Do you remember the early 2000s?
“Do you remember the early 2000s?”Still trying to forget, thanks!
Whooooo let the bad memories out?
i hope your mom gets raped to death by pigs. not the cop kind mind you. actual pigs. thanks for teaching me how to kinja, cunt.
Oh, I didn’t teach you anything. Just gave you an additional avenue for you to be your worst self. Use it wisely!
ive been here far longer than you have child. youre just jealous because i get more likes than you do.
“ive been here far longer than you have child”If that’s true, then why are you so dumb?“youre just jealous because i get more likes than you do”Yikes dude.
I don’t understand why they all remained silent for so long about this. I can see a person looking out for themselves to make sure they have a job, but after the job is over…why didn’t they say anything? For the longest time they all praised Joss.And by “they” I don’t just mean the cast, if the set really was that toxic surely crew members witnessed it as well.
Unless you’re Pitt Clooney level famous, you never say anything bad about anyone in public. You give bland interviews where you and your co-stars are just like family and you love each other! Remember Katherine Heigl was mildly critical of some places she worked on and she got labelled difficult and it ruined her career? That’s why none of them said anything. Especially if you’re a woman, the media will call you a bitch or turn it into a catfight thing.
This just seems like a fuckton of excuses for them to not speak up. You essentially blamed the patriarchy.
I believe you, but as someone who doesn’t remember the early 2000s, can give you some examples?
Part of it, I think, is that he wasn’t an asshole to every woman he worked with. Per people like Marti Noxon, he was supportive of his women writers. And number of his actresses became part of his close social circle and were made to feel special as a result. That seems to be part of how he fostered such a toxic work environment—by making some of his cast think that they were the ones committed to doing important artistic work and performing Shakespeare at Joss’s house in their spare time, while coworkers like Gellar were just doing the work, collecting the paycheck, and going home to their families like it was just some job.
his cast think that they were the ones committed to doing important artistic work and performing Shakespeare at Joss’s house in their spare time, while coworkers like Gellar were just doing the work, collecting the paycheck, and going home to their families like it was just some job.Yeah and that’s also how he got fans to kind of rally around him. He was the cool boss that people wanted to hang out with. I remember a lot of fans kept thinking there was something wrong with SMG because she didn’t participate in those Shakespeare reading/after hours hangouts at Whedon’s when so many other cast members did.
This. It wasn’t a sexist thing with whedon. It was a clique thing. Some people were in, and got treated well. Others were not and got bullied relentlessly.
Your response makes a lot of sense. Thank you for writing.
His dad was well-loved in Hollywood. He didn’t work on the most glamorous stuff but he had a lot of friends. Joss’s bad behavior came out shortly after his dad died, so he wasn’t protected anymore. Joss also had his favorites Eliza Dushku and Amy Acker were treated well and had no idea how bad it was for others at the time.
I’m guessing Joss was more powerful than his dad long before he died.
You just admitted that you’re guessing. You don’t need to have the most prestigious resume to be personally popular. That’s part of how Joss started working in the first place and why he got more chances after the Buffy film didn’t do well.
And you’re not guessing when you say his father was what was protecting his reputation? I imagine his dad would’ve helped his career get started, but Joss had achieved icon status well before his dad died.
I wish that she would go into more detail. What did Joss do?
Based on everything I’ve heard, he was just a real asshole boss. He didn’t do anything predatory, as far as I know.
I have walked out of jobs in the middle of a shift because the boss was a shithead. Don’t work at a place that you hate.
Not to excuse Whedon who, by all accounts, is a real piece of shit. But don’t worry, Sarah! You won’t have to worry about toxic sets anymore. (that’s a joke about her lack of employability!)
She’s on Wolf Pack.
For now.
Looking at her filmography since Buffy ended, she’s hardly been starving for work.
She’s been working steadily since Buffy except for a little time taken off when her kids were born.
Working steadily? Not really. And all if her bigger work since the show was done were flops but whatever.
When #MeToo was going on, and something vague arose about then-nerd-darling Josh Whedon, I found it very interesting that none of the many, many women actors he’d worked spoke up in his defence.They didn’t speak out against him — not yet — but the guy was famous for strong female characters, and not a single woman vouched for him.
White privilege.
“While Gellar, who starred as Buffy Summers in the ‘90s mega-hit Buffy The Vampire Slayer, did not explicitly name director Joss Whedon in her comments, it is not hard to read between the lines.”
Because she’s already explicitly said she doesn’t want to be associated with him for the rest of her life. Jesus fucking Christ,
Am I the only one curious about what exactly Joss did that made it be decided that he could not be alone in the same room with the actress who played Dawn, Michelle Trachtenberg?
Was there some sort of sexual abuse? I’m struggling to think of another reason why there would be such a rule, but also why would her parents want to continue to let her near such a man?I’m not blaming her, rather I’m wondering what the adults on set were thinking.
So there were no photos available in which she doesn’t obviously despise the photographer?
This has all been so deflating when it comes to Whedon. He managed to create this “nerd hero” image for himself and the “ultimate” friend of the woman. To think that is all bullshit really sucks.