By Chris Snellgrove
| Printed 19 seconds in the past
It has been a really tough time to be a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Within the final yr, Michelle Trachtenberg, who performed Buffy’s sister, tragically died. Final week, Hulu formally killed the TV present revival that was going to deliver Buffy Summers again to the small display. Most just lately, Nicholas Brendon, who performed Xander Harris, died on the age of 54.
It didn’t take lengthy for his former Buffy costars to jot down memorial posts on social media platforms equivalent to Instagram; some have been higher than others, however all of them have been shifting in their very own means. Nevertheless, as somebody who had been maintaining with the Xander actor earlier than his loss of life, I’m haunted by a secret that the fandom doesn’t actually wish to discuss. You see, Nicholas Brendon hated Sarah Michelle Gellar, and he made a sequence of very nasty, very public allegations about her mere days earlier than he died.
The Zeppo’s Final Experience
This got here within the type of Fb, the place Nicholas Brendon went reside on March 14, lower than every week earlier than his premature loss of life. The video appears that rather more surreal now: Brendon is consistently shifting forwards and backwards in a rocking chair (he had an eclectic ardour for rocking chairs) whereas violently coughing; he blamed the smoke from his cigarette, joking at one level that he gave the impression of Bane. Through the 45-minute video, he mentioned a number of facets of Buffy the Vampire Slayer earlier than all of the sudden and unexpectedly leveling varied accusations in opposition to lead actor Sarah Michelle Gellar.
The remark began innocuously sufficient, with Nicholas Brendon saying, “I consider that the best way that the present ended shouldn’t have ended the best way that it did.” Quickly, although, he singled out Sarah Michelle Gellar, claiming that “She labored actually exhausting, however she form of f***ed the present, in a means.” Particularly, he hated how “She informed everybody she was leaving means too late into the sequence, so Chris Snellgrove Joss [Whedon] was not ready for that…it wasn’t honest to the crew, the solid or the present.”
A Shock Protection Of A Canceled Icon
Talking of the controversial showrunner, Brendon was seemingly one of many final of the Buffy actors to brazenly help Joss Whedon. On this similar Fb video, he argued that Hulu mustn’t have tried to reboot Buffy with out Whedon’s involvement; nevertheless, Whedon quietly retired from public {and professional} life after a number of allegations that he created a hostile work setting and was personally poisonous in direction of his solid. After Cordelia actor Charisma Carpenter made a sequence of damning allegations about Whedon, she was brazenly supported by Buffy actors like David Boreanaz, Michelle Trachtenberg, and Sarah Michelle Gellar.
Whereas Brendon had not usually publicly criticized Gellar, many learn his continued protection of Whedon as an oblique criticism of her. For instance, the Buffy Summers actor provided a brief and easy stance of help for Charisma Carpenter, writing, “I stand with all survivors of abuse.” In the meantime, Brendon supported Whedon and minimized allegations in opposition to him, claiming they have been simply “bullsh*t…cancel tradition.”
In that creepy Fb video proper earlier than he died, Brendon didn’t mince phrases: along with persevering with his full-throated help for Whedon, he additionally blamed Gellar for eager to cease performing in Buffy the Vampire Slayer after Season 7. Beforehand, Gellar claimed that she wished to depart the present as a result of she was bodily and mentally exhausted; she wished to take pleasure in life along with her new husband (Freddie Prinze, Jr.), and he or she felt there was nothing new to do along with her character. It didn’t assist that, like many Buffy followers, she actually hated Season 6.
Saying Goodbye To Our Childhood Hero
Sadly, Brendon noticed her departure as a private assault that took away his meal ticket. To a point, he was proper: he by no means had any main roles after Buffy ended. Arguably, although, this was due much less to his abilities as an actor and extra to the very public drug and alcohol addictions he suffered from. By all accounts, Gellar was at all times supportive of Brendan, whose struggles went all the best way again to their Buffy days. However that help didn’t hold Brendon from seeing her as an enemy in the long run.
All of this provides one other layer of tragedy to Nicholas Brendon’s premature loss of life. His profession peaked a long time in the past, and he clearly resented Sarah Michelle Gellar for leaving the present and prematurely ending the best position he would ever have. Given sufficient time, Brendon may nonetheless have been part of any future makes an attempt to reboot Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Now, although, he was taken from us far too quickly, and in a horrific twist, he died hating the lady who helped make him well-known.
