Sarah Michelle Gellar Opens Up About Her Big Return to TV
Nope, it’s not a Buffy reboot.
But Sarah Michelle Gellar is making a big move: She’s returning to the small screen once again. It’s been five years since we saw the actress on TV, when she starred in the single season of The Crazy Ones alongside the late Robin Williams. Before that, the mom of two was in the CW’s Ringer for its one season before it was also canceled. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gellar’s breakout role, ended it’s six-year run in 2003. (No, we can’t believe it’s been 16 years, either.)
So, yeah, it’s a pretty big deal that Gellar, 42, will be returning to TV next year in not one, but two new shows. PureWow sat down with the actress on behalf of her partnership with Colgate Optic White (and yes, we can confirm that she has a gorgeous set of chompers, even those vampires would be jealous…) to chat about her upcoming projects.
Both shows are based on novels and currently in pre-production. Her first show, Other People’s Houses, is set to air on Fox and is based on the Abbi Waxman book about a group of affluent moms in L.A. who discover a juicy secret (veryyy Big Little Lies meets Desperate Housewives).
“I was fascinated by the idea that, through social media, is how we live our lives these days,” Gellar, whose character, Anne Porter, is a mommy blogger in the novel. “We make all of our assumptions about how people are thinking, feeling and how we validate ourselves through the lens of social media. But no one’s using that as a storytelling device. Why not?”
“That’s sorta the lens we’re going to take with the view of these women and their stories,” Gellar said, although she refused to “give any clues” about her character, which she has said will deviate from the book quite a bit.
Other People’s Houses will see Gellar reunited with her “really good friends” and Ringer creators, Eric Charmelo and Nicole Snyder, who are writing the script.
“We felt like we had more storytelling to do,” Gellar said. “Ringer was amazing, but it was ahead of its time. It came out when people were still doing 22 episodes each season, which is no longer sustainable. We just wanted to do something that was bigger and better. This was the perfect time to re-team.”
The second TV show, helmed by Ellen DeGeneres and Warner Bros. Television, is called Sometimes I Lie. Gellar will star as main character Amber Reynolds, and will executive produce. Robin Swicord (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Memoirs of a Geisha, Little Women) will pen the script.
“It was one of the most exciting books I had read in a very long time,” Gellar gushed, referring to the debut novel by former BBC journalist Alice Feeney that the show will be adapted from.
“I love thrillers,” the former Buffy star said (and we’re not surprised). “This book has all these twists and turns that I didn’t see coming.”
After reading the psychological thriller about a woman who wakes up from a coma in a hospital bed with no recollection of how she got there, Gellar “tracked the author down – no joke, people think I exaggerate this story – to a shed on her property where she writes” and tried to convince her to bring the novel to the small screen. “Her friend was a huge Buffy fan,” Gellar admits, which she believes is the only reason Feeney took her call in the first place.
The novel centers on a “dangerous female friendship,” as Gellar puts it. “We talk about male-female toxic relationships, but nobody’s even studied the toxicity that can happen between two women,” Gellar said of the novel’s plot. “That’s the story I wanted to tell.”
Feeney acquiesced, telling the actress she had three months to shop the novel to different production companies. That’s when she called DeGeneres and her company, A Very Good Production.
“They loved it,” Gellar said, and hinted at “exciting news” about the show coming out next month.
“Holds breath in anticipation.”
Original article at PureWow
This article has been reproduced for archive purposes.
