Speaking on The Rewatcher: Buffy the Vampire Slayer podcast, Kristine Sutherland was asked what changes she would have made to Joyce Summers. Her answer was immediate and specific.
The clothes.
“The only thing I felt that was missing was that I wore a lot of mom clothes that I thought didn’t reflect my profession,” Sutherland said. “A woman in an art gallery does not wear double-pleated. I so did not want to wear double-pleated.”
She also wanted more depth to Joyce’s professional life. “I would have liked to have explored more of Joyce’s work life… it sometimes felt like she just worked in an art gallery.” She points to a scene in “Dead Man’s Party” — where Joyce is shown in her gallery with the cursed Nigerian mask — as an example of what she’d have liked more of.
It’s a reasonable note. Joyce Summers was running an independent art gallery in Sunnydale while simultaneously raising a teenager who happened to be the Chosen One. The double-pleated trousers don’t quite track. Sutherland played the character with enormous warmth and care regardless — but she’s not wrong about the wardrobe.
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