Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a cult classic, and arguably one of the best supernatural teen dramas in history. The beloved show (which is streaming with a Hulu subscription) has been making headlines thanks to its scrapped reboot New Sunnydale, and there are also plenty of folks watching the original for the first time. And Kristine Sutherland, who played Buffy's mom Joyce Summers, recently spoke about the "hardest thing" about bringing that beloved character to life.
While she was never a series regular, Joyce was an important part of Buffy's overall story, especially in the first five seasons. Kristine Sutherland brought a ton of warmth to the show, and ended up being the mother figure for the entire Scooby Gang. She recently did an interview on the YouTube of Cordelia actress Charisma Carpenter, where she revealed some of the difficulties she had playing her signature role. In her words:
The hardest thing about playing Joyce was that I had to do things sometimes that seemed to me to be so against character. Like the whole thing with Ted, to not take her seriously, to kick her out of the house and tell her she can't come back. You know, those things were just so hard.
Sutherland revealed that her mother wasn't particularly kind, and she wanted to be that for both her real-life son, as well as Joyce on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So when plot lines came up where she failed her onscreen daughter, she would have a hard time pulling the scenes off. Above she referenced the Season 2 episodes "Ted", where Joyce gets a boyfriend (played by John Ritter), and starts taking his side over Buffy's. Fans of the show will recall that the episode later reveals he was actually a homicidal robot. Buffy is my favorite show of all time, so I get the actress' comments. Anytime Joyce and her daughter were at odds it felt wrong.
Buffy and Joyce had their biggest blow out fight in the Season 2 finale episode "Becoming, Part Two", where Sarah Michelle Gellar's title character finally comes out as a Slayer to her mother... and gets kicked out of the house in the process. Sutherland spoke about bringing those difficult moments to life, offering:
I kind of reconciled them by going, ‘We're seeing the world through Buffy’s eyes, and we’re certainly seeing her mother through her eyes.’ So sometimes, you're doing something because the plot needs you to or that's the way Buffy might see it as opposed to who you might be as a character. But that was so unbelievably painful for me to say the words, 'Get out of the house, and don’t come back,’ because I can’t even imagine that. I could never say that to my son.
While the scene might have been hard to film, it's a memorable one for folks who watched the beloved series... myself included. Particularly LGBTQ+ Buffy fans, who saw themselves in the Slayer's coming out process. Of course, the show would be even more important for queer representation when Willow came out as a lesbian in college.
Fans will remember that Joyce shockingly died in Season 5's "The Body", which Joss Whedon claims is the best thing he's ever done. But she continued to pop up in cameos throughout the show's final two seasons. And the actress is adored by Buffy fans to this day, even if she (understandably) struggled to shoot certain sequences.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is streaming in its entirety on Hulu. Unfortunately, the reboot New Sunnydale seemingly isn't happening on the streamer. We'll just have to wait and see if it gets new life somewhere else.
