In celebration of the show’s 25th anniversary, Evan Ross Katz’s newly published book,Into Every Generation a Slayer Is Born: How ‘Buffy’ Staked Our Hearts, gave the cast and crew members of Buffy the Vampire Slayerto revisit their time on the show.
The book reveals that many of the female cast and crew faced a toxic workplace created by creator Joss Whedon. This isn’t the first allegation to come out against the director, either. Last year, Gal Gadot spoke out about Whedon threatening her and her career if she didn’t follow his vision for the character of Wonder Woman.
Whedon has maintained that he was “never physical” with actresses or crew members, but Buffy alums Charisma Carpenter, Danny Strong, Emma Caulfield, and costume designer Cynthia Bergstrom addressed the numerous allegations against the writer-director in Katz’s book.
The series stars Sarah Michelle Gellar as vampire-hunting teen Buffy, who slays the souls of demonic vampires while trying to navigate the life of a “normal” teen. Danny Strong, who played Buffy’s love interest, said that the accusations against Whedon were “far beyond '' what he realized at the time.
“Look, my experience on the set was a very positive experience, including my interactions with Joss. And so I wasn’t aware of how toxic the set was for some,” Strong said. “And it seems like who it was toxic for was the really attractive women. That was who he was creating really unpleasant working experiences for. And it’s not in your typical sexual-harasser way, even.”
Sarah Michelle Gellar and Joss Whedon on the set of Buffy in 2001Credit: Getty Images
The "high school" environment that Whedon created on the set seemed to exist outside of the show. Caulfield recalled her thoughts when allegations against Whedon came out in 2017, saying, “Well, that’s out finally… I don’t know why it took people so long to have an understanding that this person who fanboys put on a pedestal and think can do no wrong finally got dethroned.”
Charisma Carpenter, who starred in the spin-off series Angel, previously alleged that Whedon was verbally abusive and discriminated against her when she was pregnant, ultimately leading to her termination from the series.
“I was let known how [my pregancy] was fucking everything up for the season,” Carpenter said.
According to Carpenter, “[B]ecause this was Josh's first show, there were things that got dropped. I think sometimes it made the set feel tense because people were like, ‘I don’t know that I’m important. Like, I know Sarah [Michelle Gellar] is important because she’s the name of the show, but am I important?’ And I think that that made it hard. And I think it puts a lot of pressure on relationships with Sarah and other actors and then other actors with each other. I think there was a lot of tension in that way.”
Some actors don’t think Whedon’s personality would have been different if he had more experience or not.
“I think that this mentality that we’re seeing in him is kind of like this high school nerd who’s angry that the pretty girls didn’t like him and he gets older and he’s gonna lash out at the pretty girls or hook up with some of the pretty girls, and the pretty girls that don’t want to hook up with him he’s going to lash out at them in some way or turn other girls against them,” Strong said.
If you're a new director, the basic advice here is just to be a nice person and don't bully anyone on your set. But we also have advice for avoiding common conflicts and helping actors find the best performance.
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Source: IndieWire
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