Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Sarah Michelle Gellar Says She’s Too “Tired and Cranky” to Join Reboot

Reports of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot have been around for years, though there have been very few official details about the project emerging, but one thing we surely shouldn’t count on is seeing original TV series star Sarah Michelle Gellar returning to the series in any capacity. Given that the project is billed as a reboot, we could assume that it would once again focus on a teen-aged Buffy realizing it is her destiny to kill vampires, but Gellar also seemingly ruled out the idea that she would return to play a different character in the new series, citing that she’s too “tired and cranky” for the endeavor.

During an On With Mario Lopez podcast appearance, when discussing a possible return to the concept as an older character, Gellar admitted that she felt she was a “wee bit, how do they say, long in the tooth for that.” She also noted that a key component of the Buffy character is that she is a teenager, as the monsters “were a metaphor for the horrors of adolescence.”

“I do think that story lends itself, it’d be interesting to see how a chosen one would deal with that. I don’t think it’s me, I don’t think I should be the one doing it,” Gellar added, while also confessing that she’s “way too tired and cranky to put in that work again.”

The story was first told on the big screen in the 1992 film Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with Gellar debuting as the character in the TV series in 1997. That TV series concluded in 2003.

“I love that the story holds up, and that people are calling for that,” Gellar added.

Despite the project being billed as a reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, writer Monica Owusu-Breen, who had reportedly been tapped to serve as showrunner on the series, previously detailed that there was “only one” Buffy. In this regard, it’s possible that this new take on the concept drops “Buffy” from the title entirely.

“Before I became a writer, I was a fan. For seven seasons, I watched Buffy Summers grow up, find love, kill that love. I watched her fight, and struggle and slay. There is only one Buffy. One Xander, one Willow, Giles, Cordelia, Oz, Tara, Kendra, Faith, Spike, Angel… They can’t be replaced,” Owusu-Breen shared back in 2018. “Joss Whedon’s brilliant and beautiful series can’t be replicated. I wouldn’t try to. But here we are, 20 years later… and the world seems a lot scarier. So maybe, it could be time to meet a new Slayer… And that’s all I can say.”

Stay tuned for details on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot.

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