Sarah Michelle Gellar, a pop culture icon of the early 2010s, is returning to acting after taking a nearly decade-long break to focus on raising her family.

To follow up her recent cameo in Netflix’s Do Revenge, which paid homage to her classic Cruel Intentions character, she will next be seen in Wolf Pack, a new CW series hailed as a descendant of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Gellar believes that the key to her future is playing parts that would “speak to the fan base.”

Gellar may be ready to reprise a role in a show about taking on powerful antagonists, but she has no interest in going back to the Buffy set, which several of the series’ original cast members have since described as exhausting, troubling, and abusive due to alleged behaviour on the part of showrunner Joss Whedon.

Gellar doesn’t discuss about Whedon or her time working with him in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, but she does say that she’s in a “nice place with it… where it’s easier to talk about.”

In 2021, actor Charisma Carpenter made allegations against Whedon on social media, saying he had emotionally abused her on the sets of both BTVS and Angel.

Numerous celebrities have come up in defence of Carpenter, with some even sharing personal stories of encounters with his alleged behaviour.

Young actress Michelle Trachtenberg said on social media that Whedon “was not permitted in a room alone with her” because of a “rule” on work.

Gellar, in her own statement of support at the time, said only, “While I am delighted to have my name linked with Buffy Summers, I don’t want to be forever identified with the name Joss Whedon.”

After nearly two years, Gellar still has no plans to write a tell-all about her time on Buffy or with Whedon. She explains,

“I won’t reveal my whole tale because I don’t gain anything from it. Since this is a lose-lose situation, I’ve said all I have to say. Everyone loses.”

Freddie Prinze Jr., Gellar’s long-time husband and co-star on Scooby Doo, speaks up where Gellar does not. According to the actor’s comments in THR, Gellar had to endure “a lot of garbage on that show for entire seven years it was on.”

Since she was sometimes the sole one working 15-hour days,

“the stuff they put upon her, without any credit or genuine remuneration… but she always managed to convey the character’s message each week in a way that was both proud and professional,” as Prinze puts it.

Similarly to what Prinze said, Gellar’s former BTVS co-star Emma Caulfield remembers a set climate where Gellar “lacked the backing to be the leader she needed and wanted to be.”

For whatever reason, Caulfield says, “there was a tremendous amount of hatred and animosity [toward her] from a certain someone” (and I think we can all guess who).

According to her account, Gellar is looking forward to the future. Producing and starring on Wolf Pack, Gellar says she attempts to use the knowledge and experience she’s accumulated over the course of her 30-plus-year career to help her younger, more promising co-stars.

She expresses the hope that she has provided the necessary support systems and safety nets for the actors involved. “We didn’t have that back in my day.”