For '90s kids, Michelle Trachtenberg was ubiquitous and overlooked at the same time. At
one point, she was on some of TV's biggest shows, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Gossip Girl.
But she's been out of the limelight in recent years. Let's look at what she's up to today.
In a world where vampires sparkle in the sun rather than shrivel up and die, Michelle
Trachtenberg could have become one of the biggest names in Hollywood. According to Us Weekly, the
actor almost landed a role — maybe as Bella — in the Twilight franchise. Yes, that Twilight — the
one that catapulted Kristen Stewart into a mind-boggling level of fame and grossed more
than $3.3 billion worldwide. Trachtenberg told Us Weekly of her shot at on-screen immortality:
"There was definitely interest here and there because there's only so few pale
girls in Hollywood. I've known [director] Catherine Hardwicke since the movie Thirteen.
I was actually supposed to star in that, but I was on Buffy at the time."
The actor ultimately blamed her schedule for why it didn't work out. And she tries not to
think about where her career could've gone had she gotten the part. Trachtenberg explained:
"[Hypothetical answers mean] you're not living in the moment
and you're looking negatively at what you're doing now."
She added that she's, quote, "already done the vampire thing" with Buffy:
"There are only so many vampire-related roles a girl can take."
Trachtenberg's role as Georgina Sparks on Gossip Girl was polarizing for longtime fans
because it shifted the narrative about Serena's tumultuous, party girl past. It's also hard
to not mention the fact that Georgina somehow managed to make Dan believe she had his baby,
which made fans question if he had the smarts to hide his identity as Gossip Girl to begin with.
"I thought you were the only guy decent enough,
at least who I slept with, to take on that responsibility."
Georgina also shifted the narrative of Trachtenberg's career. After playing
a character so unlikable, the star was no longer bound to wholesome TV roles. She was
also poised to hop behind the camera, taking on a production gig that didn't end up working out.
In 2010, Vulture announced that Trachtenberg was teaming up with Gossip Girl developers
Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage to produce an untitled series in which Trachtenberg was to
star as a criminology student with a dark past. She came up with the idea for the show herself,
which was supposed to be her first major gig behind the scenes. It was scheduled for
a potential fall 2011 premiere, but it never got off the ground. Trachtenberg then nabbed
a part-time gig on the Showtime dramedy Weeds while she finished out Gossip Girl.
One big reason Michelle Trachtenberg hasn't been on our small screens lately is that she
isn't too fond of taking on recurring TV roles. In 2004, the actor admitted to Entertainment Weekly
that she never planned to return to television following Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She said:
"I'm not a person to repeat myself creativity-wise. And I found TV to be
rather stifling, especially Buffy. Three years as one character — where they're not changing
the character and your abilities aren't being tested or challenged — gets very repetitive."
Trachtenberg did make some exceptions along the way,
appearing in a handful of episodes on series like Six Feet Under and Weeds.
She told Conan O'Brien in 2006 that she was famous enough to handpick guest appearances
in her favorite primetime series, which is how she ended up on an episode of House:
"Please, please let me do a guest spot. My one thing is that I really
need a love scene with Hugh Laurie. Because I fell in love with him"
Trachtenberg swapped big TV roles for web shows, TV movies, and big-screen projects
that challenged her skills. For example, for Killing Kennedy, she brushed up on her ability
to speak Russian. And for Ice Princess, she learned to competitively ice skate.
Trachtenberg got to test her chops as a producer in 2015, but she didn't go the traditional TV
route. She went for the really small screen with the web series Guidance, a steamy teen
drama not too far from her Gossip Girl roots. The series premiered on Verizon's go90 app,
and had some YouTube star power with Anna Steele cast as a lead. There were high hopes for it.
In the series, Trachtenberg starred as Anna,
a guidance counselor investigating mysterious and racy photos being passed around by a group
of high school students. Unfortunately, the platform the series was on didn't survive.
Verizon's original video-streaming app failed to gain traction, and go90 was shuttered in 2018.
Digiday claims it was a $1.2 billion failure, and Guidance only survived two short seasons.
In 2016, Trachtenberg finally hit a major '90s child star milestone, following the time-honored
tradition of becoming a genuine Lifetime star. She had appeared in Lifetime flicks like The
Dive from Clausen's Pier and the 2015 hit The Christmas Gift, but Sister Cities became one
of her biggest TV movie successes, garnering a whopping 81% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Lifetime movies are something of an enigma and, like everything Trachtenberg does,
they have a fervent cult fanbase. According to Variety,
Lifetime nabbed the TV rights to Sister Cities in 2016,
and the production was led by the Emmy-nominated team behind the network's hit Return to Zero.
The success was also due to Trachtenberg's effortless performance. She told ET Canada:
"I'm definitely a perfectionist,
and extremely type A, and not a lover of nature. So, it's very funny to see
myself-slash-Dallas in a lot of the environments that [are] surrounded by greenery and Earth."
If you haven't seen Trachtenberg on-screen since Gossip Girl,
you've probably heard her. In recent years, the star has dabbled in voice acting.
For more than a decade, she occasionally popped up on Robot Chicken as Gummy Bear or one of many
other female characters. She even reprised her Harriet the Spy role for an episode in 2018.
Trachtenberg recently appeared in the animated Facebook Watch series Human Kind Of,
where she starred as Judy Reilly, a nerdy teen who discovers she's half alien. The episodes are just
five minutes long, which marks a departure from Trachtenberg's numerous feature film
roles, but it appears to have been well-received. As of spring 2021,
the show's one season has a 7/10 rating on IMDb, and 97% of Google users liked it.
With news of a Gossip Girl reboot starring new actors, fans are itching to see the CW
show's original cast reclaim the steps of the Metropolitan Museum. As it turns out, it's not all
that unlikely. Two miniature Gossip Girl reunions happened in 2019 — they just didn't air on the CW.
Georgina Sparks was spotted with none other than Manhattan's reigning Queen B. Over the years,
Trachtenberg has maintained her friendship with Leighton Meester
despite their on-screen characters' mutual disgust. According to People,
they got together for a mutual friend's mystery-themed bachelorette party and
Trachtenberg shared a snap of the reunion on Instagram. She captioned the post:
"Spotted. Ms. Waldorf and Ms. Sparks. In the ballroom. With secrets. I'll never tell."
Trachtenberg also had a run-in with her co-star Chace Crawford,
who played Nate Archibald. As she posted to her Instagram,
it all went down at a pre-Oscars party. Seems like Ms. Sparks isn't such a black sheep after all.
Michelle Trachtenberg has had a rather quiet love life for such a major star.
According to Perez Hilton, she allegedly had a screaming match with Ashlee Simpson in 2009
over Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz, who she snuggled up to at the Warped Tour three
years prior. But beyond that, we rarely hear about Trachtenberg's significant others in the tabloids.
In 2020, everything changed when Trachtenberg
faked her own engagement. The star got some attention when she posted a photo of herself
on Instagram wearing a very conspicuous engagement ring. She captioned the post:
"I picked the right one."
...before clarifying that she was only talking about voting for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
As for her relationship status, Trachtenberg has apparently been attached for a while.
At the time of the engagement rumors, Us Weekly confirmed that the star had been quietly dating
her talent agent Jay Cohen for more than a year. She reportedly signed with his agency in 2014.
EuroTrip was so much more than a raunchy comedy that somehow managed to compress
every single stereotype about Europeans and Americans abroad
into 93 sweet minutes of debauchery. The film is, quite literally, American history. It was so
culturally relevant that it's been eternally preserved in the Library of Congress.
Trachtenberg's role as Jenny was her raunchiest to date. She didn't just accidentally make out
with her on-screen twin brother during an absinthe fueled club night — the actor
also donned a bikini, which marked the first time she showed any sort of skin
in a flick. She told Entertainment Weekly it was, quote, "a little stressful."
In 2014, Trachtenberg celebrated the 10th anniversary of EuroTrip at a panel
with her co-stars where she revealed some juicy behind-the-scenes details about the cult classic.
According to Entertainment Weekly, the star admitted that the extras from the
nude beach scene hung around craft services totally stripped down. Can you say awkward?
Sarah Michelle Gellar and Michelle Trachtenberg have known each other for longer than most of
us have known our best friends. The pair worked together on the daytime soap All
My Children in 1994, right before Trachtenberg found mainstream success with Harriet the Spy.
According to the BBC, it was Gellar who helped Trachtenberg land the role of her on-screen
little sister in Buffy – and she's remained a so-called little sister to Gellar ever since.
In 2015, Trachtenberg celebrated her 30th birthday and got a super-sweet Instagram tribute from her
fellow Buffy castmate. Gellar captioned a collage with photos of the pair through the years:
"How is it possible that you are 30, @michelletrachtenberg.
I met you as a little girl on [All My Children] and have continued to watch you grow. You may be
taller [than] me now, but you will always be my little sister. You have the [key] to my heart."
It's clear that Trachtenberg is one of the rare celebrities that makes lifelong friends on set.
It seems like Gellar and Trachtenberg still hang out, and according to Us Weekly,
the pair got together as recently as 2018 for a Halloween charity event.
Over the past few years, Buffy director Joss Whedon has faced numerous allegations
regarding his on-set behavior. The tipping point was an op-ed written by his ex-wife,
Kai Cole,who said he allegedly cheated on her and hid his bad behavior behind a feminist image.
Justice League actor Ray Fisher was the first to come forward with a tweet saying:
"Joss Wheadon’s [sic] on-set treatment of the cast and crew of Justice League was gross,
abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable."
It doesn't end there. Buffy actor Charisma Carpenter accused Whedon of fostering,
quote, "an abusive environment." In February 2021,
Carpenter took to Twitter and claimed that among a number of horrific allegations,
the director berated her when she became pregnant and wrote her off of Angel as a result.
But Michelle Trachtenberg and Sara Michelle Gellar had their Buffy co-star's back.
According to People, Trachtenberg reposted Gellar's Instagram statement which read:
"I stand with all survivors of abuse."
Trachtenberg took it one step further, alleging that Whedon
acted inappropriately towards her when she was a teenager on the set of Buffy. She said:
"There was a rule. Saying. He's not allowed in a room alone with Michelle again."
The situation is still evolving,
with Justice League producer Deborah Snyder most recently speaking out to Insider.
Trachtenberg first debuted on Buffy more than 20 years ago, but fans still can't get over her role
on the show. If you thought Georgina Sparks was controversial, she doesn't hold a candle to Dawn.
The character has long been criticized for being a whiny, unnecessary addition to any already beloved
series. Even Trachtenberg is willing to admit she was iffy about her character in the beginning,
but she's totally over the drama now. The actor told Entertainment Weekly in 2017:
"Most of the haters don't have the guts to say things in person. I still get comments like,
'Oh my God! I think Dawn is so annoying!' I get it. It's fine. It used to be a 60-40 'I hate
Dawn.' Then, it became 50-50. Now, I think it's 60-40 being supportive of Dawn. Maybe even 70-30."
Trachtenberg's biggest gripe is that Dawn was annoying because teenagers are annoying.
"Do you really think I care you're the Slayer?
What's that supposed to mean?"
She continued:
"I rarely get the 'Oh she ruined the show.' I do get a lot of 'Oh she was so whiny!' Hi, were
you a teenager? Oh, you were docile, sitting in the corner, doe-eyed and happy to be there? No."
And considering that Buffy hasn't aired a new episode since 2003, maybe let it go.
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