Something Sarah Michelle Gellar said in her recent Guardian interview has been doing the rounds, and it’s worth highlighting on its own because it cuts to something pretty real about where genre storytelling is right now.
Talking about her return to TV with Wolf Pack, Gellar reflected on why she’s always gravitated toward genre work — horror, supernatural, action — and pointed out that it’s historically been one of the few spaces where women can genuinely lead and hold an audience. Then she got more specific:
“Genre is where women can really succeed and hold an audience. Every time a Marvel movie tries to do a female cast, it just gets torn apart… Unfortunately, audiences weren’t as accepting. There’s still this mentality of ‘the male superhero,’ this very backwards way of thinking.”
She’s not wrong, and it’s not a subtle point — Captain Marvel and She-Hulk both got review-bombed before they’d even aired, purely because they centred women. The backlash to those projects was loud, organised, and pretty nakedly hostile in a way that male-led MCU entries just don’t experience.
What’s interesting coming from Gellar specifically is the context. She built her career in the late 90s leading a genre show at a time when that was even less common, and she’s watched the landscape shift — partly for the better, partly not. She knows better than most how much resistance there still is to the idea that women can anchor this kind of story.
The full interview in The Guardian is well worth your time if you haven’t read it yet.
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