Kristine Sutherland reveals 'hardest thing' about playing Sarah Michelle Gellar's mom on “Buffy”: 'Unbelievably painful'

Staff AuthorWed, May 6, 2026 at 3:00 AM UTC

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Sarah Michelle Gellar and Kristine Sutherland on 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'Credit: Richard Cartwright/UPN/EverettKey Points -

Kristine Sutherland is looking back on her time playing Joyce Summers, Sarah Michelle Gellar's mother on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Sutherland revealed the "hardest part" about playing Joyce on The Bitch Is Back, the podcast hosted by Charisma Carpenter, another Buffy costar.

The actress referred to an "unbelievably painful" season 2 arc that culminates in Joyce kicking Buffy out of the house, which she found "so against character."

For many fans, Kristine Sutherland's Joyce Summers is the heart and soul of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So they'll understand when she identifies a particularly "painful" arc as the "hardest thing" about playing the character.

Sutherland appeared on Tuesday's new episode of The Bitch Is Back, the podcast hosted by her Buffy costar Charisma Carpenter. Both actresses played pivotal roles on the early seasons of the supernatural dramedy, which took a decidedly dark turn in season 2, when tensions mounted between Joyce and her on-screen daughter, Sarah Michelle Gellar's Buffy.

"The hardest thing about playing Joyce was that I had to do things sometimes that seemed to me to be so against character," Sutherland told Carpenter.

"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," she explained. "You know, those things were were just so hard."

From its inception, the series created and run by Joss Whedon tread a delicate path between its comical and sardonic side, and its gritty and pessimistic side. But moving into the second season, as the series exploded in popularity, the scales tipped decisively toward the dark. And Joyce, one of the only characters shielded from her daughter's secret double life as a supernatural assassin, was pulled into the dark with it.

In the second season's eleventh episode, "Ted," Joyce is utterly shocked to witness Buffy kill her boyfriend, Ted (John Ritter). He turns out to be a sort of robot Bluebeard, with plans to kill her, which moves Joyce from outrage to unsettled gratitude. But in the season 2 finale, "Becoming (Part 2)," Buffy is forced to kill again in front of Joyce, and finally divulge her secret identity. In one of the series' most heartbreaking scenes, Joyce commands her daughter not to come back if she leaves to go fight more evil, and so Buffy chooses slaying over her family.

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"That was was so unbelievably painful for me to say the words, 'Get out of the house,' you know, and, 'Don't come back.' Because I can't even imagine that," Sutherland shared.

Kristine Sutherland as Joyce Summers on 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'Credit: The WB

For a couple reasons, however, Sutherland can understand why the Buffy writing team wrote Joyce into such a painful corner.

"I kind of reconciled that by going, 'We're seeing the world through Buffy's eyes, and we're certainly seeing her mother through her eyes,'" she said. "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."

Still, "That was hard. But, you know, sometimes you're there to further the plot, and sometimes you can reconcile that with, you know, this is what Buffy's thinking about me at the moment."

Other Buffy stars have criticized the show's writing, with even less caveats than Sutherland added. In 2023, Gellar plainly told Vogue that she "didn’t enjoy filming season 6. I didn't enjoy watching season 6 [back]. It wasn't the heart of who she was, to me. I get going through a dark phase or being upset, but... it wasn't what the show was about."

You can watch Sutherland's full conversation with Carpenter on The Bitch Is Back podcast above.

on Entertainment Weekly

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”