Melanie Lynskey reveals why she didn't get the role of Willow in 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'

Decades before she was an Emmy-nominated cannibal-turned-suburban mom on "Yellowjackets," Melanie Lynskey was almost Sarah Michelle Gellar's sidekick Willow on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

Lynskey, 46, praised Alyson Hannigan as "absolutely wonderful" in the role of Willow while detailing how she almost joined the cast of the iconic show that ran from 1997-2003.

In an interview with Evan Ross Katz for "Shut Up Evan: The Newsletter," she confirmed what he had heard from Gellar about Lynskey almost being part of the "Buffy" cast.

Katz, who wrote the 2022 book "Into Every Generation a Slayer is Born" about the show, relayed that Gellar said show creator Joss Whedon had envisioned Lynskey as Willow.

"It is basically true," Lynskey said. "It was kind of a visa issue, but not really; I also was not sure about doing television at that time. 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," she continued.

Lynskey remembered having dinner with Whedon and staying in touch with him before hearing the actor playing Willow in the pilot was going to be replaced.

"And I had seen the pilot and I was like, 'Oh, this is good,' and I kind of took my agent into it," she said. "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," she continued. "And then I didn’t get it! Alyson Hannigan got it, who was absolutely wonderful and all was (cast) as it should have been. That was the actual story."

Lynskey also expanded on her openness in talking on Josh Horowitz’s podcast “Happy Sad Confused” earlier this year about the "heartbreaking" loss of her friendship with actor Kate Winslet. The two drew acclaim for their roles in the 1994 movie "Heavenly Creatures."

"That was a formative time of my life," she told Katz. "I was 15 years old and it was my first job. You know, the reality is, not all relationships last forever. You don’t stay in touch with people. It’s very hard when you live in different countries. It’s a thing I know so well now. And there are people I’ve lost touch with.

"It’s just life. But I was just like, 'Oh, God, I just loved her!' and for me, I meant it to sound like a loving thing about the time that I did have with her and how precious that was to me. And then it turns into something that it just wasn’t and I’m like, 'Do I say something about it?'"

This article was originally published on TODAY.com