The lead in a show that never saw the light of day. Starring alongside an Oscar nominee with
hardly anybody noticing. A detour as a half-alien. Michelle Trachtenberg has some iconic characters
under her belt, but it's been a while since she's been in anything high-profile. Here's why.
Can you envision Michelle Trachtenberg starring in Twilight?
She in fact very nearly landed a role in the popular vampire franchise,
though it ultimately didn't pan out. As she revealed to Us Weekly in 2011,
"There was definitely interest here and
there because there's only so few pale girls in Hollywood."
But as it turned out, Trachtenberg had already signed on to other projects that
conflicted with Twilight, so she couldn't commit. As she bemoaned,
"I guess schedules never worked out."
Being a part of Twilight would've undoubtedly lifted Trachtenberg's career to new heights, and
maybe if she'd backed out of another project, she could've made it happen. Regardless, she tries not
to spend too much time looking back and wondering how things might've been different. As she put it,
"[Hypothetical answers mean] you're not living in the moment and you're
looking negatively at what you're doing now."
In 2000, Trachtenberg joined the cast of the popular supernatural series Buffy the Vampire
Slayer for the show's fifth season. She starred as Dawn Summers, the title character's little sister,
who proved to be quite pivotal. When Dawn discovers her true purpose,
she struggles to accept who she is and her mystical connection to every single dimension
of reality. Trachtenberg was grateful for the opportunity to be part of such an impactful show,
but she wasn't exactly enthusiastic about the idea of working on another TV series
once it was over. As she admitted to Entertainment Weekly in 2004,
"Honestly when I left Buffy, I never thought I'd go back to TV because I've done it. 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."
While Trachtenberg did eventually return to TV,
her experience of being held back as a creative individual in front of the camera
may have very well discouraged her from accepting other small screen roles.
"What? That's so lame."
Perhaps one of the reasons that Michelle Trachtenberg became so hesitant to accept
certain roles was because some fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer responded so negatively to her
character. Critical viewers found Dawn Summers to be annoying, but to Trachtenberg's credit,
that might just mean that she played the role of the annoying little sister incredibly well.
Still, comments like that have to hurt. To this day, Trachtenberg says that people still
tell her about how much they disliked Dawn. As she recounted to Entertainment Weekly in 2017,
"I still get comments like, 'Oh my God! I think Dawn is so annoying!' I get it. It's fine. [...] 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. There's a reason why teenagers have a stigma, and that is what Joss [Whedon] wrote."
It may be true that Dawn was prone to sulking and complaining,
but as Trachtenberg notes, she was at least a realistic character.
"What I respect is the fans."
Trachtenberg had a recurring role as Georgina Sparks on The CW teen drama Gossip Girl from 2008
to 2012, and in the midst of that, she had her sights set on starring on her very own TV show.
In 2010, Vulture reported that the production team behind Gossip Girl was working on producing a new
CW drama for Trachtenberg. She was set to star as a criminology student with a complicated past
and an uncanny talent for profiling suspects. The actor had pitched the
idea for the show herself, and she was also set to serve as a producer.
Originally, the show was supposed to begin airing with hour-long episodes in the fall of 2011.
This would've represented a big step forward in Trachtenberg's career. But like so many other
interesting series that never see the light of day, the pilot was simply never picked up. Losing
the opportunity to produce and star in her own TV show was definitely a setback for Trachtenberg.
So why haven't Michelle Trachtenberg's more recent films gotten the same attention as some
of her earlier projects? Well, after her time on Gossip Girl,
her subsequent projects simply haven't earned very many positive reviews.
In 2014, Trachtenberg appeared in the sci-fi thriller The Scribbler,
which told the story of a woman who attempts to eliminate her multiple personalities through a
risky experimental process. But this comic book adaptation fell flat among critics and audiences.
That same year, Trachtenberg also starred in the made-for-TV comedy movie Save the Date as a woman
who races to find a husband after having a few too many drinks and booking a wedding venue.
With middling reviews, Save the Date wasn't exactly a boon for Trachtenberg's career either.
Then in 2015's The Christmas Gift, she played a curious reporter who tries to
track down a stranger who unknowingly changed her life after sending an anonymous present.
Unfortunately, The Christmas Gift didn't make much of an impression on critics either, so for
a couple of years, it seemed like Trachtenberg was struggling to find roles that truly suited her.
In 2015, Trachtenberg took on a starring role on the web series Guidance, which was hosted
on Verizon's mobile video streaming platform go90. She played Anna, a guidance counselor who tries to
help one of her students investigate the source of some scandalous photos. She only appeared in
the first season, as each season featured a new cast of characters dealing with different issues.
Ultimately, Guidance was canceled after three seasons. The short episodes just didn't pack
enough punch into a few minutes, and critics and audiences felt relatively neutral about
the whole thing. The streaming platform it was hosted on ended up folding as well,
as there just wasn't enough interest in what go90 had to offer. While the premise of the series
was interesting, most people simply weren't checking out go90 for any reason whatsoever.
"Stickers?"
"She was big into scrapbooking."
"Who isn't?"
"I love to scrap."
In 2016, Trachtenberg starred as Dallas Baxter in the Lifetime movie Sister Cities. Based on the
2006 play of the same name by Colette Freedman, the plot follows Dallas and her three sisters,
who've been estranged for years until their mother's sudden death brings them back together.
"Dallas is, is very type A and very particular. Um, she's a complete perfectionist."
The sisters then must untangle their past and investigate the strange circumstances
surrounding their mom's death. The result is a family mystery and a family drama all in one,
making for a suspenseful narrative, although it didn't make much of a cultural footprint.
Sister Cities actually did earn a positive response from audiences, but it wasn't like
critics were talking about it nonstop. Those that did take note of the film generally enjoyed it,
and it surely helped that it had an Oscar nominee in its cast in the form of Jacki
Weaver as the mother. Perhaps it flew under the radar simply because it was a made-for-TV movie,
but whatever the reason, it didn't do much for Trachtenberg's career.
Trachtenberg has always been passionate about acting,
but that doesn't mean she's not also interested in other showbiz
roles. And as it turns out, she's actually written several screenplays. It's only natural
that the actor who made a name for herself as an aspiring writer in Harriet the Spy
would be interested in penning her own stories. As she revealed to Entertainment Weekly in 2017,
"I'm fully WGA and a writer and have sold several projects.
I feel like [I'm living] a Hollywood version of Harriet's life."
At the time, she was working on two writing projects that she was particularly passionate
about. One was a period piece based on a true story taking place over 30 years beginning in
the 1950s. The other one told the story of an accessories editor with aspirations of being
a writer. Alas, these screenplays never made it to the screen. Perhaps Trachtenberg is now
writing something else, or maybe she's pushed these plans to the backburner.
In 2018, Trachtenberg lent her voice to the Facebook web series Human Kind Of. She played
Judy Reilly, an awkward teenager who discovers the unexpected reason she's always felt so out
of place, as it turns out that her estranged father is actually an extraterrestrial.
Judy has no idea how she's going to navigate life as a half-human,
half-alien teenager, and it's not as if high school wasn't hard enough already.
But her optimistic mother and her best friend have her back, and as the series progresses,
she learns to embrace both sides of her personality and everything that makes her unique.
Each episode ran about five minutes, making for an easy and entertaining watch.
The series earned decent reviews, but unfortunately,
it would be another short-lived project for Trachtenberg, as it lasted for only a single
season. While Trachtenberg has definitely shown her willingness to think outside the
box by taking on projects like this, it hasn't necessarily translated to mainstream attention.
"You have a clot of explaining to do."
"Mom, don't do that."
Trachtenberg had a memorable recurring role on the original TV version of Gossip Girl.
Georgina Sparks stirred up trouble every time she came back to New York City and was
one of those classic characters who viewers loved to hate. She was simply captivating,
and whenever she turned up, you knew that everything was about to go haywire.
Trachtenberg has yet to appear on the Gossip Girl reboot that premiered on HBO Max in 2021,
but that may soon change. According to Josh Schwartz, who was one of the showrunners
during Gossip Girl's original run and is also an executive producer for the reboot,
the production team told the original cast members that they were welcome to come back
for the reboot. But so far, most of them haven't taken him up on the offer. That is, except for
Kristen Bell as the voice of Gossip Girl, as well as a few other supporting characters. As Schwartz
explained to reporters during the Television Critics Association summer press tour in 2019,
"We've reached out to all of them to let them know it was happening, and we'd love for them to be
involved if they want to be involved but certainly didn't want to make it contingent upon [them being
involved]. They played these characters for six years, and if they felt like they
were good with that, we want to respect that, but obviously... it would be great to see them again."
After wrapping up Human Kind Of, it seemed like Trachtenberg went on a bit of a hiatus
for a while. For a few years, she didn't appear on screen at all, and her upcoming slate doesn't look
terribly busy. However, she has spent some time teasing a new project that she'd been working
on behind the scenes, and early in 2021, she revealed just what she'd been waiting to unveil:
a true crime show. She excitedly shared the news with her fans on Instagram, as she announced,
"The cat's out of the bag. Excited to share that soon, you can watch me as the host and
executive producer of my new true crime show Meet, Marry, Murder. Do you really know the
person you go to sleep with every night? Stay tuned.....it's going to be killer."
"Be careful who you sleep with at night."
Trachtenberg has been a fan of true crime for a while. She even wrote a screenplay about a
serial killer years ago. So clearly, this show must be a major accomplishment for her.
Meet, Marry, Murder Season 1 aired on Tubi in 2021, so maybe it won't be long before we stop
thinking of Michelle Trachtenberg as a mere relic of the early and mid-2000s. Hollywood may have
seemingly lost interest in her for a while, but it sounds like she's not quite done with Hollywood.
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