The weight of the world always seemed to rest on Buffy Summers’s shoulders. As Sarah Michelle Gellar tells it, some of that weight was hers too.
“I was so defined by my work when I was younger, and that was what made me. That was all of who I was. All I knew about myself was work,” Gellar tells The National.
For seven seasons from 1997 to 2003, Buffy the Vampire Slayer dominated pop culture discourse and influenced the wider media landscape. And turning in one of television’s defining performances took a toll on Gellar. In the years after it ended, she receded from public life. In part, because she lost her joy.
“I went and had a family, and I took quite a few years off,” she says.
But in recent years, with that weight finally lifted, she has found that joy again.
“Now I pick projects based on the experience. Like, have I played this character? Is it going to be a great experience? Who could I work with? And I enjoy it on such a different level because I don’t feel that I have as much to prove any more.”
If it looks like she is having a rip-roaring time in the horror-comedy Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, she is.
“Even working all night in the cold, this project was the best time,” she says. “I just think I enjoy it. I think it shows in my work too.”
A sequel to the 2019 hit, it picks up directly after the first film’s wedding-night massacre and pulls Samara Weaving’s Grace into a larger supernatural struggle among wealthy families, with the balance of power now up for grabs. Gellar plays Ursula Danforth, one of the siblings at the centre of the fight for world domination.
Ursula gives Gellar something she has always been good at. She is rich, poised and venomous. There is something of Kathryn Merteuil, Gellar’s cool, scheming turn in Cruel Intentions, in her too.
“It wasn’t a direct channel, but we did talk a little bit. I always think, where’s Catherine now? What’s she doing? There were definite similarities. I tried to differentiate some of it too, but absolutely,” Gellar says.
Elijah Wood plays the Lawyer, the figure who lays down the rules. He comes into the film in his own way, but knows that kind of weight too.
More than 20 years after The Lord of the Rings, Frodo remains the role most audiences carry into the room with him, and in recent months there has been renewed talk of a return in the forthcoming The Hunt for Gollum. At 45, though, he sounds similarly relieved by a part that asks something else of him.
“There’s a freedom to joining something where you’re not bearing the weight of the film,” Wood says. “You get to play in ways you might not in a different situation. We were fans of the original, understood the tone and understood that balance. Coming into that world was really enticing and fun.”
That suits the Lawyer. He stands slightly outside the panic. He carries the book. He lays out the terms. He watches everyone else lose their heads.
“The job at hand was articulating the rules to the families, but I also liked the distance he has from what’s going on beyond providing those rules,” Wood says.
“He isn’t involved in the stakes. He gets to watch these families vie for power in ridiculous ways, fumble over themselves and expose the messiness of humanity. He can stand back and watch that, which I found amusing and interesting.”
“I think it’s also really lovely to join something that you aren’t the lead,” Wood says. “There’s a freedom to it, where you’re not bearing the weight of the film, and you’re able to play in ways that you may not in a different scenario. So that is really fun, being asked to come into a sandbox, especially one that’s sort of established.”
That freedom runs through both performances. Gellar gets Ursula’s chill and bite. Wood gets the Lawyer’s distance and dry amusement. For two actors who once carried entire worlds on their backs, Ready or Not 2 gives them room to have some fun.
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is now in cinemas across the Middle East
