Sarah Michelle Gellar Explains Why She Was Drawn to Wolf Pack

Wolf Pack is a new series from Teen Wolf creator Jeff Davis that is based on the 2004 book of the same name by Edo van Belkom. The first episode is now streaming on Paramount+, and it features Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar playing an arson investigator named Kristin Ramsey. In honor of the new series, Gellar has been talking about her return to TV and how her days playing Buffy helped prepare her for another supernatural teen show. In a recent interview with Graham Norton (via PEOPLE), Gellar revealed what drew her to the project.

“I had no intention of reading it, but then we got deeper in the conversation around mental health, which is very timely,” Gellar explained. “The werewolves are a metaphor for teenage anxiety.” She talked more about what makes the show special in an interview with Digital Spy. “I think the conception of these characters was one of the reasons why I did love it so much,” Gellar shared. She talked about how the character Blake (Bella Shepard) has visible acne at the start of the series and explained that people haven’t “seen a character that has acne on television like that.” She continued, “That’s the whole idea, is normalizing so many of these things … Normalising anxiety, that was one of the themes that really struck me when I first read it, was dealing with teenage – and just adult – anxiety, in sort of a different manner.”

Is Wolf Pack a Teen Wolf Spinoff? 

When Wolf Pack was originally announced, many assumed the new series was a spinoff of the MTV series Teen Wolf, which ran from 2011 to 2017. While there is a new Teen Wolf movie that was also released on Paramount+ yesterday, the original show and the new movie are actually unrelated to Wolf Pack. Recently, Davis spoke with SFX Magazine (via CBR) and clarified that Wolf Pack is not a spinoff of Teen Wolf. 

“I know that everybody gets confused by it, but I always say, ‘Nobody thinks Twilight is in the same universe as Interview With The Vampire,’” Davis said. “There can be two werewolf shows that exist in separate spaces. It’s funny because one of the things we did was consciously try and do things differently with Wolf Pack.” The creator also pointed out that Wolf Pack is more “sophisticated” than Teen Wolf.

“I said, ‘I don’t want to do the same show. I want to do something more adult, a little bit extreme in places. Not necessarily darker, but a little bit more sophisticated in terms of themes.’ Teen Wolf was very comic book. It had a real sense of humor… not that Wolf Pack doesn’t have a sense of humor, but it’s not as comedic as Teen Wolf,” Davis explained. 

Wolf Pack‘s second episode is coming to Paramount+ on February 2nd.