Buffy the Vampire Slayer actor Charisma Carpenter has revealed she will not be a part of the new reboot.
The actor, who played Cordelia Chase in the original series and its spinoff Angel, has denied rumours she’ll return alongside Sarah Michelle Gellar in the new show.
Carpenter, 55, said she was not in the pilot, which has been directed by Nomadland Oscar winner Chloé Zhao, and suggested the revival is yet to be commissioned for a full run.
“Hey, I get asked this a lot, ‘Are you doing the reboot?’ – and I thought I would address it,” she said in a TikTok video.
“I am not in the reboot. I am not in the pilot. I don’t even know if the show has been picked up to go to series. I assume it will be.”
Carpenter’s comments come after Gellar said she wanted to recruit all of her old co-stars, including Alyson Hannigan (Willow), Nicholas Brendon (Xander) and Anthony Head (Giles), for the forthcoming series, which will focus on a new younger slayer played by newcomer Ryan Kiera Armstrong.
“We will try to find a balance between new and old characters,” Gellar recently told Vanity Fair Italia. “My dream is to bring back everyone who has died, but space will have to be made for new stories as well.”
Airing in 1997, Buffy the Vampire Slayer followed highschooler Buffy Summers as the newest “slayer” fated to battle supernatural creatures, including vampires. The series ended after seven seasons in 2003.
Carpenter played high school queen bee Cordelia in the first three seasons of Buffy before joining David Boreanaz in spinoff series Angel, which ran from 1999 to 2004.
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Original Buffy creator Joss Whedon will not be part of the reboot. Whedon, who wrote the 1992 film of the same name that the series was based on, was accused in 2021 of toxic misconduct on the set of Justice League and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Carpenter tweeted about the toxic environment Whedon allegedly created, which included a claim that Whedon called her fat when she was four months pregnant, something he has denied.
“Most of my experiences with Charisma were delightful and charming,” Whedon said in response, stating: “I did not call her fat.” Whedon took a step back from his professional duties in the wake of the allegations.
Gellar said in a statement on social media: “While I am proud to have my name associated with Buffy Summers, I don’t want to be forever associated with the name Joss Whedon.
The actor had originally been against the idea of resurrecting the show.
In 2023, she told SFX Magazine: “I am very proud of the show that we created, and [a revival] doesn’t need to be done. We wrapped that up. I am all for them continuing the story, because there’s the story of female empowerment.”
