Buffy and Angel may have spent years testing the boundaries of supernatural romance, but Sarah Michelle Gellar knows exactly where to draw one in real life.
Gellar reunited with her Buffy the Vampire Slayer co-star David Boreanaz at the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards on Monday, 14 September, more than two decades after their star-crossed characters last appeared together onscreen. The former co-stars even held hands while posing on the red carpet, giving longtime Buffy and Angel shippers plenty to work with.
One photographer, however, tried to take the reunion a step further.
Sarah Michelle Gellar Draws the Line at a Red-Carpet Kiss
While Gellar and Boreanaz posed together, a photographer reportedly called out, 'How about a kiss one time?'
Gellar had an answer ready: 'I don't think his wife would be too happy about that!' she joked, according to Entertainment Weekly.
And that was that. No recreation of Buffy and Angel's supernatural romance occurred on the Emmy red carpet. Instead, the pair continued posing together and kept the affection firmly within friendly hand-holding territory.
There is also the small matter of both actors having been married to other people for more than two decades. Gellar married her Scooby-Doo co-star Freddie Prinze Jr in 2002, while Boreanaz has been married to Jaime Bergman since 2001. Twenty-plus years of marriage comes with a fairly reliable sense of where the red carpet ends and real life begins.
Reddit Thinks the Photographer Needed a Reality Check
If the request was intended to give Buffy and Angel fans a nostalgic photograph, Reddit users largely agreed that some things are better left in Sunnydale.
'Holding hands -> fine. Kiss? -> eww, they're actors and that was a long time ago,' one person wrote on the Buffy subreddit.
Another distilled the problem even further: 'It's like figure out the line between reality and fiction people.'
One commenter called the request 'rabid, even by paparazzi standards', while another pointed out that marital status was hardly the only issue, writing: 'Even if they weren't lol.'
Perhaps the most appropriately located reaction came from a fan who noticed that Entertainment Weekly had reported the incident.
'I love that the website reporting this is ew.com. Cause asking them to kiss is ewww,' they wrote.
Some fans were willing to acknowledge why the request may have happened, though. One commenter suggested the photographer was simply after a particular image, while another saw the fact that Buffy and Angel could still inspire such a request decades later as evidence of how iconic the fictional pairing remains.
Buffy and Angel's Romance Still Has Fans on Opposite Teams
Gellar and Boreanaz starred opposite each other during the first three seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with Buffy's romance with vampire Angel becoming one of the show's defining relationships.
Boreanaz eventually left the series to lead the spin-off Angel, although the characters crossed paths again in subsequent years, including during Buffy's 2003 series finale.
More than two decades later, fans are still debating whether Buffy belonged with Angel or Spike, played by James Marsters. Gellar herself has never exactly hidden which side she favours.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly for the show's 20th anniversary in 2017, she said there was 'something so beautiful' about Buffy and Angel's story before declaring: 'But for me as Buffy, I think Angel.'
So yes, Captain Buffy-and-Angel is still very much aboard her ship. She just doesn't need the actors steering it into their actual marriages.
The 'Buffy' Reunion Continued Inside the Emmys
The red carpet was not the end of Gellar and Boreanaz's reunion. The pair later appeared onstage together to present the award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.
Their appearance came ahead of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 30th anniversary in March 2027. For one night, however, Buffy and Angel were standing side by side again.
The hand-holding was real. The vampire romance can stay in Sunnydale.
