“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” star Sarah Michelle Gellar has confirmed that Hulu’s upcoming “continuation” series will be titled “Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale.”
“It’s not a sequel. It’s not a reboot. It’s a continuation,” Gellar told the Shut Up Evan podcast. “Where is she now in this world and what this world is that Buffy lives in, with her and without her?”
“It’s not a reboot. It’s not picking up with all the same characters right away. It is not a sequel,” she notes. “That’s why the name was even important to me, you know, in ‘Buffy: New Sunnydale.’ It’s Buffy, but it’s also something else.”
Gellar also addressed the wait for the show, revealing that they’re still developing the story to be the best it can be before moving forward.
“I always said I would never do it, and I have learned a very hard lesson in life. There’s a reason why that saying is ‘never say never.’ So I will eat my words, and I’m okay with that. I’ve learned my lesson, that’s totally fair,” Gellar admits.
“I never saw how to do it. I never saw how and why it could be as good. I’m not trying to be better, I just want to hold up. I want to hold and honor the memory and what we created.
“I know sometimes that memory is conflicted for people about how they’re supposed to feel about it, but a lot of people put their blood, sweat, and tears into making what I think is an incredibly great show, and I’m incredibly proud of it.”
She continues, “Chloé Zhao came to me – and not just her passion, because I’ve seen people with passion before, but she knew how to go into the world, she knew what the world was, and she knew the why. And that was the first time I said, ‘Maybe, could I possibly do this?’
“And this went on for, what, three years now of me and Chloé going back and forth — saying I could do it, saying I can’t — and really spending the time to develop what it is and why it is. We’re still working on that, why and how.”
Gellar adds, “We live in a society where we want binging, we want it now, and I know this seems like it’s taking a long time. And it’s because, unless we are sure that it is exactly what we we set out to do and that it makes sense to do it, we don’t want to sully the legacy by not.”
She concludes, “When I know it’s perfect, that it will be out there, but I won’t do it unless I know it can be that.”
The “New Sunnydale” pilot, directed by Zhao (Eternals, Nomadland) and written by showrunners Nora Zuckerman & Lilla Zuckerman (“Poker Face”), was filmed last summer.
Gellar reprises her iconic role as Buffy Summers alongside Ryan Kiera Armstrong (Firestarter) as a new vampire slayer named Nova.
The cast also includes Faly Rakotohavana (Nightmare Cinema), Ava Jean, Sarah Bock (“Severance”), Daniel Di Tomasso (“Witches of East End”), Jack Cutmore-Scott (“Frasier”), Kingston Vernes, Chase Sui Wonders (I Know What You Did Last Summer), and Merrin Dungey (“Shining Vale”).
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