Sarah Michelle Gellar’s complicated relationship with her biggest movie: “I’ve had a whole trajectory”
Sarah Michelle Gellar is one of those actors who means very different things to different people, depending on the generation you’re from.
If you grew up in the 1990s, then you will know her from her work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer as the titular character, battling dozens of monsters of the week and revolutionising what it meant to be a female hero on TV, and while it’s a shame that Joss Whedon turned out to be a giant asshole, a lot of the messages of the show still resonate today.
However, if you’re a little bit younger, then you know her for her 2002 appearance as Daphne Blake in the live-action Scooby-Doo movie. Alongside her real-life husband, Freddie Prinze Jr, as Fred, Linda Cardellini as Velma, and Matthew Lillard as Shaggy, there’s a case to be made for this being one of the greatest displays of casting in movie history; even the guy they got to play Scooby was excellent and really embodied the role.
Sadly, Gellar doesn’t have the best view of this time in her career, and speaking on the Shut Up Evan podcast, the star revealed that the movie was originally supposed to be more adult-oriented, but once she signed on the dotted line, plans changed behind the scenes.
“I’ve had a whole trajectory with this movie,” she said, “There was a time where I really was upset about it. And it was not the movie I set out to make. Now, in hindsight, all these years later, I totally appreciate it. And I love it, and it’ll totally make me laugh. But there was a time where it was like a disappointment in the sense of, you know, what we were sold was not what it was.”
As anyone who has seen the film will tell you, Scooby-Doo isn’t that family-friendly; for starters, it was written by James Gunn, and you can tell, for it is full of jokes that flew over the heads of its young audience. Isla Fisher’s character, who serves as Shaggy’s love interest, is called Mary-Jane, for crying out loud, but that said, you can definitely imagine a world where it was more adult.
From a business perspective, Scooby-Doo was exactly the right choice for Gellar, which was a big hit at the box office, enough to spawn a sequel that came out two years later, but critically, it was a misstep.
Both films were mauled by reviewers, who feared that playing the characters would taint the actors for the rest of their lives, wherein there’s an argument to be made that the movies halted the career of Prinze, as he struggled to regain any of the momentum he had prior to playing the ascot-sporting detective.
As Gellar said, however, she has a very different view of the films nowadays. The two live-action Scooby-Doo films are beloved by so many who grew up with them as kids (this writer very much included), and it’s widely agreed that those rough reviews were unfair, so let’s hope McKenna Grace enjoys a better initial reception when she steps into the role
