Melanie Lynskey passed on Buffy the Vampire Slayer because she 'wasn't super into' TV at the time
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Three-time Emmy nominee Melanie Lynskey wasn't always known for her scene-stealing TV roles. Before she was skinning rabbits in Yellowjackets, getting murdered in Candy and terrifying the masses in The Last of Us, the New Zealand-born actress wasn't so sure about committing to the small screen.
In a new interview with Shut Up Evan: The Newsletter — conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike — Lynskey revealed that she was once up for the role of Willow in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But until she saw the pilot, Lynskey wasn't so sure about making the leap from film to TV.
"It was kind of a visa issue," Lynskey explained, referencing her need for a work visa when taking on Hollywood roles. "But not really. I also was not sure about doing television at that time."
Lynskey continued, "It was very early in my career. I had a very old-school agent who was like, 'TV? That's for has-beens!' and I was like, 'I don't think it is anymore.' Certainly now things have really changed, but I just wasn't super into it at the time."
Dave Benett/Getty Melanie Lynskey
Lynskey made her big screen debut in 1994 at the age of 16, starring as a murderer in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures. She followed it up with memorable turns in movies including Ever After, But I'm a Cheerleader, Coyote Ugly and Sweet Home Alabama. Her first TV role wouldn't come until 2002 but for a while, Buffy was a contender. The first time around, Lynskey passed on the opportunity.
"I had a dinner with Joss and I don't remember if it was an offer or if it was like, "Would you come read for it?" or what it was, but we stayed in touch after that," Lynskey explained. Whedon wanted Lynskey to play Buffy's best friend, Willow, who would go on to become a powerful witch. For the pilot, the role went instead to actress Riff Regan. When time came for a recast, Lynskey was still in touch with Whedon.
"I had seen the pilot and I was like, 'Oh, this is good,'" Lynskey said. Interested, she brought the project back to her agent. "And then, it became this whole thing of, 'Well, now you have to audition.' So I auditioned. Then: 'Oh, they didn't like what you were wearing.' It was a whole process. And then I didn't get it!"
This many years later, Lynskey isn't too torn up about it: "Alyson Hannigan got it, who was absolutely wonderful and all was [cast] as it should have been."
Lynskey eventually found her way to the small screen in 2002 with a role in the Stephen King-penned horror series Red Rose. A year later she would become a series regular on Two and a Half Men. And though she never got to cast spells as a member of Buffy's so-called Slayerettes, Lynskey has more than dipped her toe into the realm of TV acting since then. She is currently nominated for two Emmys: Outstanding Lead Actress for her killer role in Yellowjackets and Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for her two-episode arc in The Last of Us.
Earlier this year, Lynskey told EW that though she was hesitant to play a "war criminal" in the post-apocalyptic drama, becoming Kathleen for The Last of Us allowed her to craft a complicated villain.
"The thing I found very interesting about her is, when she did step into the role, she didn't have a lot of guilt about doing bad things, whereas her brother did," Lynskey said. "She found out that she was quite heartless and so she was able to be pretty effective in a way that he maybe wasn't because she didn't care about people. That's a very interesting dynamic."
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