9 Stars Who Almost Had Roles on ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’
Buffy the Vampire Slayer lore is rich with stories of stars from the WB supernatural drama almost getting cast as characters other than the ones they eventually portrayed.
Before Charisma Carpenter got the part of Sunnydale mean girl Cordelia Chase, for example, she was under consideration to play Buffy, the role that Sarah Michelle Gellar landed. Before Bianca Lawson guest-starred as replacement slayer Kendra Young, she auditioned for Carpenter’s part. Danny Strong, who played sorcerer student Jonathan Levinson, tried out for the part of Scooby Gang member Xander. And Nathan Fillion, the actor behind misogynistic preacher Caleb, was in the running for vampire Angel.
But the casting directors also set their sights on film, TV, and music stars who didn’t end up making the Buffy call sheet. Melanie Lynskey, for example, just revealed that she nearly had a major role on the show, and she’s in good company.
Katie Holmes
Before landing her breakout role on Dawson’s Creek, Holmes was offered the part of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s title character, but she opted to finish high school instead, PopSugar reports. The site adds that other contenders for Buffy Summers included recurring Buffy guest stars Julie Benz (Darla), Mercedes McNab (Harmony Kendall), Julia Lee (Chantarelle/Lily), and Elizabeth Anne Allen (Amy Madison).
Selma Blair
Gellar’s friend and Cruel Intentions costar also auditioned to play Buffy but “didn’t even come close,” she told Instagram followers in 2018. (Coincidentally, Blair also revealed in the same Instagram post that she also auditioned for Holmes’ Dawson’s Creek part.)
Natasha Lyonne
Now famous for Russian Doll and Poker Face, Lyonne had her own near-miss with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “I remember after the Woody Allen movie [1996’s Everyone Says I Love You], The WB was really eager to have me join the network,” she told Entertainment Weekly in 2013. “They were giving me scripts for Buffy, Dawson’s Creek. … I remember going to see my mother after [Lyonne’s 1998 film] Slums of Beverly Hills. She was like, ‘I told you two things: I told you to get your boobs done, and I told you to do Buffy.’ Incidentally, I think Sarah Michelle Gellar is all-natural in that department.”
Melanie Lynskey
Lynskey confirmed in a recent interview with Shut Up Evan: The Newsletter that she was in the running to play Scooby Gang member Willow. “I had a dinner with [creator] Joss [Whedon], and I don’t remember if it was an offer or if it was like, ‘Would you come read for it?’ or what it was, but we stayed in touch after that,” the Yellowjackets star said. “And then I guess they were replacing the person from the pilot at a certain point, and I had stayed in touch with [Joss], and he said, ‘Now do you think you would want to do it?’ And I had seen the pilot, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is good,’ and I kind of took my agent into it. And then, it became this whole thing of, ‘Well, now you have to audition.’ So I auditioned. Then: ‘Oh, they didn’t like what you were wearing.’ It was a whole process. And then I didn’t get it! Alyson Hannigan got it, who was absolutely wonderful, and all was [cast] as it should have been. That was the actual story.”
Riff Regan
Riff Regan, best known for her performance in the TV show Sisters, played Willow in the unaired 25-minute pilot presentation that Whedon used to shop Buffy to networks, The WB included. “[Willow] was a really hard role to cast,” casting director Marcia Shulman said in a DVD special feature. “We actually had cast someone else in the pilot, and it just didn’t work, so when we got picked up, we always felt that we were going to start again and look for another Willow. The qualities that Willow had to have are the exact opposite qualities of what actresses have to have: sort of insecure, shy, self-effacing.”
Ryan Reynolds
Before his years as an A-list movie star — and even before his time on the TV show Two Guys and a Girl — Reynolds turned down the chance to play Xander on Buffy. (Nicholas Brendon filled the part in the end.) “I love that show and I loved Joss Whedon, the creator of the show, but my biggest concern was that I didn’t want to play a guy in high school,” the actor explained to the Toronto Star in 2008. “I had just come out of high school, and it was f—king awful.”
Britney Spears
In 2000, after she had hit the charts with her songs “…Baby One More Time” and “Oops!… I Did It Again,” Spears had to pull out of a guest appearance on Buffy because of a schedule conflict, as TV Guide announced at the time. PopSugar reports that the pop star was slated to play the humanoid robot April, eventually played by Shonda Farr, in the Season 5 episode “I Was Made to Love You.”
Freddie Prinze Jr.
Gellar’s real-life husband — who also costarred with her in I Know What You Did Last Summer and the Scooby-Doo films — was the original pick to play Dracula in Buffy’s fifth season premiere, according to Digital Spy. That part went to Rudolf Martin.
Jenny Lewis
This singer-songwriter — an alum of the indie rock band Rilo Kiley, the film Troop Beverly Hills, and the TV show Brooklyn Bridge — tweeted in 2021 that she did a network test for Buffy. She previously mentioned on Twitter that Whedon wanted her to play a werewolf on the show, leading The A.V. Club to speculate that she was in contention to play shapeshifting singer Veruca before Paige Moss got the job.
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