Sarah Michelle Gellar shared an emotional birthday message to her late Buffy the Vampire Slayer sister, Michelle Trachtenberg.
“When you turned 16, it was hard not to still see you as the little girl I met on All My Children. When you turned 21, I had to teach myself to not see you as the little sister anymore,” Gellar, 48, wrote via Instagram on Saturday, October 11, alongside throwback Buffy footage of the two actresses. “I can’t imagine what 40 would have been like.”
She continued, “This I know… it would be filled with love. Happy birthday @michelletrachtenberg.”
Gellar set her post to Charlie Puth and Wiz Khalifa’s equally emotional duet, “See You Again.”
Gellar and Trachtenberg first met when they both starred on All My Children in the early 1990s. Years later, they reunited on the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Gellar starred as the titular Buffy, while Trachtenberg portrayed Buffy’s younger sister and a magical key, Dawn.
Us Weekly confirmed in February that Trachtenberg died at the age of 39.
“It is with great sadness to confirm that Michelle Trachtenberg has passed away,” a rep for the Gossip Girl alum told Us in a statement at the time. “The family requests privacy for their loss. There are no further details at this time.”
Trachtenberg is survived by her parents, her sister and her boyfriend, talent agent Jay Cohen. Her cause of death was later ruled as a result of complications of diabetes mellitus.
Shortly after news broke of Trachtenberg’s death, Gellar was among the stars to share her condolences.
“’Michelle, listen to me. Listen. I love you. I will always love you,’” Gellar wrote via Instagram that month, quoting one of Buffy’s lines before sharing what Trachtenberg had said in the musical episode. “The hardest thing in this world is to live in it. I will be brave. I will live… for you.’ 💔💔💔🗝️.”
Just weeks before Trachtenberg’s death, Gellar had confirmed her involvement in a new Buffy reboot.
“It’s incredibly emotionally overwhelming,” Gellar later told Us Weekly exclusively in August of returning to her teenage role. “It’s just a place I didn’t know that I would find myself. While it was new, it was also incredibly familiar, and I feel very lucky.”
While few details about the new Buffy have been revealed, a logline has described the project as the “next chapter in the Buffyverse” starring a new slayer played by Ryan Kiera Armstrong. Gellar, for her part, is set to serve as an executive producer and will have a recurring onscreen role.
“All I can say is the same thing I keep telling everyone: we are doing it slowly and carefully because there’s no point in doing it unless we can do it right,” she told Us. “So we’re going to make sure that everything is in place before it’s something that we’re ready to share.”
Gellar further teased that the revival “won’t change any of the DNA of the show.”
“I mean, for me, Buffy was about your found family,” Gellar added. “I think now more than ever, found family is incredibly important. We all need a place where we feel like we can be ourselves and be honored for being ourselves and loved for who we are. And that to me is — that’s the point.”
It’s currently unknown whether the new series will pay tribute to Trachtenberg’s Dawn.
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