Chloé Zhao Talks Hamnet, Reviving Buffy, and Navigating Hollywood as a “Deeply Neurodivergent” Director

The director heard Gellar’s concerns, and yet, Zhao says, “I think we chose each other in that moment.”

“No one knows Buffy better than Sarah Michelle Gellar…and that’s why I couldn’t do it unless she felt like we should,” Zhao says. “The way the fans commune around her, that’s the energy we’re trying to bring out onto a small screen again.” That Zhao was one of them helped sway Gellar.

“This version is coming from the true fan that is desperate to revisit the world, not reinvent,” Gellar writes. She once told Zhao that she regretted not taking the class protector umbrella from the original series’ prom episode. On the last day of filming the sequel, Zhao presented Gellar with an exact replica.

I ask Zhao if the reports are true, that Gellar plays a mentor to a new teen slayer, but I’ve trespassed into spoiler territory. All Zhao can say now is: “She’s very much in it.”

The club of best directors who double as best picture–winning producers is small, storied, and like the profession itself, majority male. Among them are Eastwood, del Toro, Iñárritu, and Zhao.

“Her technical abilities are second to none,” Mescal says, but her soulfulness is “what sets her apart.”

Beyond Buffy, the “upcoming” tab of her IMDB page is currently blank. Much has been made of Zhao’s “female gaze,” but she’s relying now on her woman’s intuition. Despite her male-dominated industry and our male-dominated political moment, Zhao senses a “feminine consciousness” bubbling up all around us, a new era of enlightenment full of compassion and heart. You know the shift is happening, she says, when the resistance rises to suppress it. Zhao speaks so confidently, I feel a rare ripple of hope: “Let’s be ready.”

Hair and makeup, Salvador Gonzalez; set design, Viki Rutsch. Produced on location by Preiss Creative. For details, go to VF.com/credits.