Sarah Michelle Gellar Explains 1 Way ‘Wolf Pack’ Is Like ‘Buffy, the Vampire Slayer’, 1 Way It’s Better
The creators of Wolf Pack knew getting Sarah Michelle Gellar was a coup. Buffy, the Vampire Slayer made Gellar a horror icon. She did Scream 2 and The Grudge too, but makes her return to the genre in Wolf Pack, though apparently she never gave up her stake. Gellar explained some similarities between Buffy and Wolf Pack, and one major difference.
Gellar was on a Television Critics Association panel for Wolf Pack on Sept. 21. Wolf Pack premieres Jan. 26 on Paramount+.
The beauty of ‘Buffy, the Vampire Slayer’ to Sarah Michelle Gellar
Buffy, the Vampire Slayer followed Buffy Summers (Gellar) from high school through post-college. She battled monsters everywhere she went, but the show was really about growing up.
“I think one of the beauties of Buffy was the sort of metaphorical aspect of it,” Gellar said. “We were using monsters. These real monsters with the metaphors for the horror of high school. For me that’s what made the show so important, and why it still stands the test of time.”
Wolf Pack deals with some of the same social metaphors that Buffy, the Vampire Slayer did, which remain universal.
“In this world right now, we are all looking for our path,” Gellar said. “We are looking for the place where we belong, where we feel seen, and where we feel heard, and where we can be ourselves, where we aren’t judged for that. And I think that was something else that spoke to me.”
‘Wolf Pack’ has updated the monster metaphors Sarah Michelle Gellar loved on ‘Buffy, the Vampire Slayer’
Wolf Pack is about a group of teenagers who meet during a forest fire that awakens their lupine tendencies. Gellar saw parallels between the ways Wolf Pack and Buffy, the Vampire Slayer handled childhood.
When I read the script, and when I spoke with [creator] Jeff [Davis], and we spoke about the issues that he wanted to speak about, mainly anxiety and depression among children, specifically having a lot to do with their use of devices, and sort of the lack of connectivity that the youth has today. It is something that I think about all the time. It is so prominent. A big study came out yesterday linking the effects of depression and the brain synapses directly to this. I thought what a great allegory to use these horrors to speak about the horrors that we are facing now.
The forest fire part isn’t a metaphor. That’s just real.
“And then you add in the earth and what we are going through, specifically the backdrop of the fires,” Gellar said. “I lived very close to the last fire that hit LA and I was actually evacuated for a week. We didn’t know if our house was going to burn to the ground. Understanding what we are doing to our environment, and using this as an in to speak about these bigger subjects.”
1 big advantage ‘Wolf Pack’ has
Gellar did embrace one major difference Wolf Pack has over Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. On Paramount+, there are no limits to how far Wolf Pack can push things even more than her edgiest movies like Cruel Intentions.
“Because Buffy was a network show, or even Cruel Intentions, which pushed the envelope so much, we could still only go so far because we were still under the guise of theatrical ratings,” Gellar said. “Streaming is still sort of the wild, wild west. It is the untouched part that I haven’t had a chance to do.”
