“My advice to all famous people,” says Sarah Michelle Gellar, sporting a broad and immaculately-white smile, “is to go wherever Jennifer Lopez is!” Not the most practical of advice, you may think, yet as someone who is well acquainted with the rather intrusive nature of massive fame, Gellar should know what she’s talking about. “When she’s Really? Do tell….
“Let me tell you how nice it is to see Jennifer Lopez in a store buying a turkey pot, surrounded by all these people looking so beautiful, and I’m dressed in really boring sweatpants and – I’m serious – nobody notices me.”
It’s hard to tell what’s more inconceivable: the seemingly always-radiant Gellar being rendered unnoticeable, or diva J-Lo buying a kitchen utensil….But we’ll take Gellar’s word for it – especially with that smile.
Not that the diminutive ex-Buffy star was deliberately hiding in J-Lo’s shadow. The truth is, the two actresses just happened to be in the same place at the same time – in this case, Vancouver. For it’s here in this burgeoning “Hollywood of the North” that Gellar has been ensconced in her first major professional engagement since leaving undead-ridden Sunnydale last year. She’s reprising her role as the altogether more glam (and self-obsessed) Daphne in the sequel to the 2002 live-action movie of cartoon classic Scooby Doo.
For the sequel, called Monsters Unleashed, the Mystery Inc team are reunited: Gellar’s Daphne, Fred (Freddie Prinze Jnr), Velma (Linda Gardellini), Shaggy (Matthew Lillard), and, of course, a fully CGI Scooby (voiced by Neil Fanning(. This time out, tjey tackle a masked villain, who is plotting to control the town of Coolsville by wreaking havoc with a monster machine that reanimates many of the gang’s classic foes, including Black Knight, Pterodactyl Ghost, Captain Cutler and the 10,000-Volt Ghost.
Meanwhile, the much-loved gang face a public backlash, fuelled by a nosey reporter (played by Alicia Silverstone), but are given aid by the curator of The Coolsonian Institute, played by Gellar’s ex-Buffy team-mate Seth Green. Of course, it wouldn’t be Scooby Doo without a cantankerous, nasty old geezer who constantly throws a spanner in the works, and sure enough, the group face Old Man Wickles (Peter Boyle) and his – obviously – haunted mansion.
As well as the cast, Monsters Unleashed reunites the original creative team: director Raja Gosnell, writer James Gunn and producers Chuck Roven and Richard Suckle. It bears a reported budget of $80 million (six million of that, allegedly, Gellar’s fee). Although the first film was far from popular with the critics, that didn’t dissuade audiences from flocking to see the beloved cultural icon get a full-on Hollywood makeover with live action and cutting-edge CGI. The film became one of the year’s biggest hits, generating a thoroughly impressive worldwide box-office of over $250 million. “I remember when we did the junket for the first film,” recalls Gellar. “All we were wishing for was that people didn’t think we screwed it up royally. When people love something as much as Scooby Doo, our main concern was that people didn’t look at us and go, ‘Hey, there are those guys who really blew that cartoon’!”
Viewed without rose-tinted specs, the original cartoon show, while fun and much-beloved, was hardly a work of great depth or range; yet the general consensus is that the first film was surprisingly faithful to the cartoon’s tone and style. (A lot like the TV show, we run in fear constantly,” laughs Gellar.) Even so, Gellar, like her cast-mates, agrees that the first movie wasn’t made with an entirely sure sense of direction: “I think we weren’t exactly sure what our niche was the first time,” she says, “Were we a movie for an older, more satirical audience? We shot everything both ways, and it was put together in the editing room and really made for a great family film.”
According to Gellar, the sequel appears to have suffered no such indecisiveness: “I remember when we did Scream 2 and the beginning of the movie was how sequels suck and are never better than the first one,” she says. “I think we’re seeing the rend moving away from that. Especially with movies based on existing material, you spend the first 45 minutes to an hour of the first movie setting everything up, whether it’s Scooby or X-Men or Spiderman. Now, coming in for a second time all established, you know we’re making a family film, we know our characters, the story is set and makes it much easier to jump into a story.”
Certainly, Monsters Unleashed will have a far greater drive to press the audiences nostalgia buttons, an element that was found lacking in the first film. This is evident particularly in the set-piece revival of old adversaries. “I think part of the fun of Scooby Doo is the nostalgia, and that monsters sequence is very clever,” affirms Gellar. “It brings back elements of the cartoon that people love, that we didn’t necessarily have in the first one. When you see Captain Cutler’s ghost, and all these other ghosts you recognise from the series, it’s fun, and I think kids and adults alike will love that.”
In their original cartoon incarnation, the members of Mystery Inc were never granted any form of character progression, but that’s changed in the films. While Shaggy undergoes a crisis of confidence and Velma gets a love interest, the second film finds Gellar’s Daphne grappling with a rather familiar celebrity conundrum: “I think the first story, partially, revolved around Daphne finding her place, because everything to her was that she was the pretty one but never really fit in. This one’s more about public image. In the beginning, you find Daphne confident, but she’s deriving her strength from what other people think – that is, the press and the fans. She soon realises that the public is fickle, and that you have to find you own strength from within you before you can worry about how everyone perceives you.”
Character development is one thing, but there are some things about Daphne that haven’t changed a bit, particularly her overwhelmingly garish – and mostly purple – dress sense. “Yeah, yeah, I’m still wearing purple!” Gellar says in mock-angst (or maybe not mock: rumour has it she hated wearing Daphne’s pink go-go boots and would change into comfy sneakers whenever possible). But, come on, she’s a star with some clout; surely she could have had some influence on what she wore? “None! None at all!” she shrieks. “No, seriously, my wardrobe designer, Leesa Evans, is great! She’ll come with a precise vision. I remember her saying in the first week, ‘Oh! I’ve got this great idea for this wonderful gown you wear at the beginning, and it’s gonna be purple with a purple fur jacket.’ And I’m like, ‘What? Purple again?’ And then, she says, ‘What about if we have a big feather number as well?’ And I’m picturing myself as a drag queen….And sure enough, the next morning that’s what I have to wear. But,” Gellar concedes, “her ideas for Daphne are a great fit.”
One element of the film that Gellar continued to struggle with (and she wasn’t alone) was her interaction with the CG Scooby. On this, she has nothing but praise for co-star Matthew Lillard, who, as Shaggy, bore the bulk of the “acting-to-nothing” chores: “You have never seen anyone better at all that stuff than Matt. He has such a level of commitment to it. I’ll just be standing there, gazing to my right, and he’ll say, ‘The dog is to your left.’ You don’t ever hear anyone remind him about ‘where’ the dog is. You always get the impression that Matt is totally aware there’s a ‘presence’ next to him.”
Lillard isn’t the only cast member on whom Gellar is quick to shower praise. “I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of actors say how well casts get along, but I think we define ‘ensemble’ and, especially in the second movie now, we are very aware of our strengths and weaknesses. If there’s something someone is uncomfortable with, then there’s three other people who immediately chime in with a great replacement idea, It’s really collaborative and they are all my partners, I put the same trust in all three of them on-screen, and even Neil, who ‘plays’ Scooby. It makes it such an easy experience, especially being away from home.”
Talking of home, the two Scooby Doo movies have found Gellar bringing a piece of home with her to work – Freddie Prinze Jnr, who plays Daphne’s macho squeeze Fred and whom she married (sorry, lads) in September 2002. Clearly, she loves that convenience. “Oh, it’s genius. Being separated is a very unnatural and very difficult thing to deal with, and we’ve been very lucky. We’ve been involved in easy projects.” However, there are limits: “I don’t think we’d want to work in a romantic type project.”
While the first Scooby Doo movie was made during a hiatus in Gellar’s tenure on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she isn’t returning to the relatively ‘safe’ environment of a hit TV show after this one, Despite the fact that it was Gellar herself who was keen to bring Buffy to a close, has she found the transition difficult? “I don’t think I have completely made that transition yet. The same day I finished Buffy, I had to start Monsters Unleashed, which was nice in some ways. Leaving seven years of something like that is so traumatic, and it never really dawned on me immediately.”
While she shows a few signs of the change being overly difficult, she confesses to the odd faltering moment. “The first time it got to me was when I was home for the Fourth of July weekend, which was usually the time when the Buffy cast would be gearing up to go back to work and I would have been getting my first script. I still have dreams that I’m late for the day’s shooting or I haven’t learnt my lines. The enormity of the transition hasn’t really hit me yet.” Nevertheless, Gellar looks back on her seven years of Slayer duties with fondness. “I was very blessed,” she enthuses. “It was an amazing experience and I was very lucky to have been able to play such a character.”
Indeed, Gellar notes that the family-like atmosphere on the Scooby Doo set, like that in Buffy’s, has been only too welcome for her as she moves into this new phase of her career. “I feel very lucky to be here right now, surrounded by people I consider to be my family. If I was stepping into something else, I would have been a complete wreck.”
The supportive atmosphere also appears to compensate for the rigorous physical demands of the Scooby features – not that they’re all that bad, according to Gellar. “On a physical level, at least, these are a vacation compared to my normal job!” she says, though tellingly still implying that Buffy is that ‘normal job’.
So, what of the future? When she’s asked this question, Gellar’s eyes flash a Buffy-like determination. One thing is for certain, she doesn’t want to get pigeonholed. “I think the big thing I want is diversity. This is the time where I want to be able to do things where people will go, ‘Wow! I only ever thought of her as Buffy’ or ‘I though she wasn’t capable of that’. So, hopefully, I’ll get that chance, I am open to anything.” Ultimately, though, she says, “I just like to do things that interest me, because if I’m turned on by it, then hopefully the audience will be too. There’s so much I want to accomplish and be a part of, and, really, I’ve only just started.”
Despite wanting to branch out, would she return to Daphne’s kinky boots for a third time? “You never know,” she replies. “Did we have a great experience on this one? Yes. Is it a better experience than the first one? Yeah. Are we open to the possibility of a third? We just have to see how this one does.
When pressed, though, Gellar does reveal one ambition she’d like a film career to offer to her, one which her past as Buffy would serve an excellent apprenticeship for: “I’d really love to so a big action movie. I think that’d be so much fun – a kind of Lara-Croft-style affair. Remind me that I said that when I’m complaining about having broken every bone in my body!”
Scooby Doo: Monsters Unleashed is released in the US on March 26th and in the UK on April 2nd.
Reproduced thanks to the kind permission of SFX Magazine's Editor, Dave Golder. |
