Sarah Michelle Gellar

Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Southland Tales Preview

Sarah Michelle Gellar on Her Southland Tales Character: “I am a porn star with a heart of gold. I’m also a porn star with an entrepreneurial spirit. I have my own clothing lines, my own album dropping, my own lubricant line, energy drink. I also represent Golden Palace Casino. I’m sure I have a perfume. I figure I’ve gotta have a perfume. Everyone’s got a perfume. Oh, my reality show. We forgot the reality show. I also have my own reality show and I guess that kind of goes with it. If you say I’m a pornstar, clearly I have my own reality show.”

Sarah Michelle Gellar on Understanding the Story of Southland Tales: “Oh my God, you have to understand that if you’re on this film long enough, you actually confuse yourself. There were two characters getting shot the other day and we got into a 25 minute discussion, no joke. We couldn’t remember who shot whom? But also the names keep changing because of clearances, so on top of the fact that we couldn’t quite organize which character was shot, we couldn’t even remember their names.”

Sarah Michelle Gellar Has the Easy Story in Southland Tales: “Maybe it’s because I’ve been involved for so long and I’ve been through a lot of the drafts, or maybe it’s because my character probably has the simplest arc of any of the characters. I am a girl that wants to be famous in our disposable society which I think is very easy to understand in this country and I love the boy. My story is probably the easiest arc because everything I do is either for my career or for the person that I love. So I have the easy one. So yes, I understand my role.”

Sarah Michelle Gellar on the Richard Kelly Experience in Southland Tales: “No matter how many films you’ve done, television series, whatever, nothing prepares you for Richard Kelly. He calls me over the weekend, he’s like, ‘Okay, I think in this scene that Krista should have a complete emotional breakdown. We need to write- - We, as if I’m going to write this- - I think we need to write this whole thing when she sees this...’ it goes on and on with me on the weekend. I’m like, ’Okay, sure, whatever you write, I’ll do it.’ I come in on Wednesday, he cuts the scene.”

Sarah Michelle Gellar on Southland Tales Research: “In this day and age, everything is so cross-marketed that the lines have blurred in my opinion between what is an actor and what is a celebrity, what is reality. All you have to do is pick up a magazine or turn on the television and you can get ideas from places that five years ago you couldn’t. Is that a politically correct answer?"

Sarah Michelle Gellar Might Sing in Southland Tales: “That’s something that’s being discussed.Originally, I was a different character and so I did not sing.I used to be in a musical on roller skates, but I was a roller skater.But that got cut from the film which I’m so bitter about.It was a Karl Marxism musical on roller skates which I thought was genius and people were really calling for.I was getting my roller skates and legwarmers and shorts all ready.And then my character was a rapper and I was going to rap, but now my character has a song.”

Sarah Michelle Gellar Reacts to News of I Always Know What You Did Last Summer: “What? You guys are making this up. You guys are all kidding. That sounds like one of those jokes that we all made behind the scenes.”

Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Upcoming Projects:

Alice: “No, not next."

Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing: "That would be early next year."

The Grudge 2: "Good question. I don’t think they’re anywhere near. I still can’t figure out if I’m alive or dead. I’m still working that one out. Basically I only like to choose films that I don’t understand. As long as they’re greater than my mental capacity, I figure I gotta be doing something artful, right? Isn’t that what makes something art when you don’t understand it?"

Another Film Called Revolver?: "I think it had to do with the Guy Ritchie film but the Guy Ritchie film isn’t distributed here yet, so I don’t know who actually has the rights to the title. Really it’s a thriller. I think in our tendency to try to categorize things and whatever’s popular at the moment, if romantic comedies come back really big next week, it’ll be a romantic thriller. It’ll be a romantic comedy thriller. And then it’ll be slapstick next week. It’ll be a slapstick thriller. It’ll be a Keystone Cops thriller."

Sarah Michelle Gellar on Richard Kelly’s Pitch for Southland Tales:

“ I was originally playing Amy Poehler’s character and Amy Poehler was playing my character. Richard called one day and said, ‘I want to pitch this movie to you’ and I said, ‘Great, I’m going to Japan tomorrow and I’ll be back in two months and that’d be great.’ He said, ‘No, tomorrow.’ And I was like, ‘I’m going to the airport’ he’s like, ‘I’ll meet you there.’ I didn’t even know him. I was like, ‘You’re kidding, right? Could you just send me the script?’ He said, ‘No, no, I have to explain it to you, it’s visual, I have to show it to you.’ And I was like, ‘Who is this crazy person?’

So I went and had lunch with him before I went to the airport and he pitched this spectacular idea. My favorite part of this whole story is we must have met for about three hours. And he brought video footage to show me these visuals and colors and sketches and all this and my character, she wants to be this actress but she’s struggling because she’s working at CPK but she knows she has a greater gift and her dad is supporting her, she’s cutting an album. So I get on the airplane to read it, my character died in the first 30 pages in that draft. And I was like, ‘I spent three hours and I die in the first 30 pages?’

It just showed how spectacularly enriched Richard’s ideas were because everything was so fully developed to him. I signed on instantly before I even read it actually, after meeting with him because he’s so impressive when you speak with him and his ideas and he wants so badly to do something that’s different. Not as an actor but as someone that goes to the movies, you’re so desperate for anything that’s inventive, that’s different, that isn’t conventional, where someone’s not afraid to try something.

And then through that course my role got bigger and as he started to change ideas, he had this idea that the Krista character would be in love with Boxer and through different things we just realized that Amy and I would probably be better off swapping.”