Agreed. Although I think it's more complicated...and not so much medium, as age and experience and well how the set was run or the culture on the set. It was Whedon's first time as a show-runner of a tv series and he really had no clue what he was doing most of the time. Also his only experience on tv back then was on Roseanne - which was a bad work environment, Roseanne unlike most tv stars, had power and fired writers and actors right and left.
Gellar was a child star - with a background in Daytime Soaps - where you basically learn twenty pages of lines in an hour, hit all your marks, jump to the next scene, don't worry too much about how well you portrayed the character or what the character's motivation is or what you'll end up doing, because hello, soap, it's unlikely to make sense. Also you can be killed off at any time on the whim of the "producers", "stars" or fans. Gellar also had Susan Lucci as a mentor/partner (and they hated each other) - Lucci was a bit of a diva on All My Children and the lead (as far as soaps actually have one). So Gellar came from the sort of mentality that in tv - the lead rules and can be bitchy as she wants to be, as long as she learns her lines, hits her marks and treats the crew well. Add to that Gellar was 18 when she got the Buffy role and at least 5-20 years younger than most of the cast. Never attended college and went to a high school for performing arts.
Marsters in stark contrast, was 32 when he got cast. Had over 20 years of stage experience, ran his own theater company, had a BA and A Masters degree in Theater, had gone to Julliard and gotten kicked out for his temper, was divorced, had a child, had been a starving theater owner and been struggling to get roles in tv and/or film for about five years. He was also being told every day by his boss that his character would be dead soon, and out of a job. For the years, Marsters read his scripts backwards to see if he was killed off.
Sigh - I know more than I want to know about these people and what they do for a living. ;-)
no subject
Gellar was a child star - with a background in Daytime Soaps - where you basically learn twenty pages of lines in an hour, hit all your marks, jump to the next scene, don't worry too much about how well you portrayed the character or what the character's motivation is or what you'll end up doing, because hello, soap, it's unlikely to make sense. Also you can be killed off at any time on the whim of the "producers", "stars" or fans. Gellar also had Susan Lucci as a mentor/partner (and they hated each other) - Lucci was a bit of a diva on All My Children and the lead (as far as soaps actually have one). So Gellar came from the sort of mentality that in tv - the lead rules and can be bitchy as she wants to be, as long as she learns her lines, hits her marks and treats the crew well. Add to that Gellar was 18 when she got the Buffy role and at least 5-20 years younger than most of the cast. Never attended college and went to a high school for performing arts.
Marsters in stark contrast, was 32 when he got cast. Had over 20 years of stage experience, ran his own theater company, had a BA and A Masters degree in Theater, had gone to Julliard and gotten kicked out for his temper, was divorced, had a child, had been a starving theater owner and been struggling to get roles in tv and/or film for about five years. He was also being told every day by his boss that his character would be dead soon, and out of a job. For the years, Marsters read his scripts backwards to see if he was killed off.
Sigh - I know more than I want to know about these people and what they do for a living. ;-)