‘Sexy Beasts’: How ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Inspired the Wacky Reality Dating Show
Buffy the Vampire Slayer inspired many things in pop culture. But now its influence is reaching reality television. This is how the show inspired the Netflix series Sexy Beasts and more.
‘Sexy Beasts’ puts people in costumes and makeup for their dates
Netflix has played with the concept of falling in love before actually seeing the other person on Love Is Blind. But Sexy Beasts heightened that concept.
The reality show puts everyone in costumes and makeup to hide their appearance. Each episode follows one person going on three dates. After the first round, that person sends home one person, then moves forward with another date with the remaining two people.
Once a person is rejected, they remove their costume and makeup to reveal what they really look like to the rest of the cast. Fans also get to watch the person who lost look at a picture of who rejected them and react.
Each episode ends with the remaining people also shedding their costumes, and one person is picked. The tricky thing is people make their final decisions before they see what their chosen person looks like. So those decisions are based on nothing but what they learned from their dates and only hearing the person’s voice.
How ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ inspired ‘Sexy Beasts’
People usually see prosthetics used in scripted movies and TV shows. But now they’re making their way into reality dating shows. It turns out Buffy the Vampire Slayer helped someone come up with the concept of the Show.
“I used to love it when a couple of vampires would suddenly have a chat about mundane things on Buffy,” series creator Simon Welton told the Los Angeles Times. “The juxtaposition of these odd-looking creatures talking about the temperature or something like that, I thought that was funny and quite arresting as a visual.”
Watching people try to drink and kiss with prosthetics on the show offers the same comedy. There was also the theory that makeup would help people with their first-date nerves.
Are there any vampires on the show?
The first season had a wide variety of costumes. There was a devil, mandrill, mouse, stone man, zombie, pixie, and more. But no one was a vampire despite the show’s inspiration.
If the show includes a vampire, it might look very different from what we’re used to because the makeup artists try to hide as much of a person’s face as possible. Vampires on Buffy the Vampire Slayer usually called for prosthetics around people’s eyes and maybe noses.
Sexy Beasts is back for a second season with more dates and costumes. Season 2 is available on Netflix starting Oct. 7.
