10 Unpleasant Facts About The Making Of Buffy The Vampire Slayer
5. Sarah Michelle Gellar Couldn’t Stand Being Buried Alive
At the start of Season 6, Willow calls upon the god Osiris and revives Buffy using some twisted magic skills. Buffy, who is still buried beneath the ground, has to rip her way out of the coffin and crawl back to the surface.
Filming this scene would be tough for any actor, but Sarah Michelle Gellar couldn’t stand it:
“…it was four in the morning, and they basically made me do it, and I was hysterical. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done for my job, ever…I cried the whole way home. It was horrible.”
This wasn’t the only problem. Gellar doesn’t like cemeteries, either, and this scene was filmed on location in a real cemetery. In other words, she had to deal with two of her greatest fears in one day!
Thankfully, this is the one and only time she had to crawl out of a coffin, but given what Gellar went through, it’s hardly surprising she went home crying.