Summer's Dawn by Ian Spelling

Starburst - April 2001

The key to all the secrets in Sunnydale, Starburst tracked down Buffy's sister, Michelle Trachtenberg

The idea of joining the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of her favourite TV shows on the air, excited her. The concept of playing the character of Dawn, younger sister of Sarah Michelle Gellar's Buffy, sounded just great. After all, Trachtenberg and Gellar were old friends, having worked together on the soap opera All My Children. Still, swell as it all promised to be, so much also could go wrong.

"I was wondering a little about how the fans would accept Dawn," admits Trachtenberg, who made her memorable debut ("Mom!") as Dawn in the coda of Buffy Vs. Dracula, the fifth season opener. "The first couple of episodes, people weren't quite sure who she really was. So they were a little sceptical. Immediately after the explanation episode they understood who Dawn was and they began to respect her and began to really love her storyline. She was Buffy's new mission. She is what Buffy has to deal with for the fifth season. She has to protect Dawn, otherwise it's pretty much the end of the world. So the fans were very curious as to all of Dawn's secrets, but, of course, I was not able to tell them. At least I got their interest sparked, which was exactly what we wanted to do. When you create a new character, especially on Buffy, there's always a lot of 'Hmm, who is this person? What does she add to the show?' But Joss does his storylines so wonderfully that new characters are explained and the viewers accept it.

"There were a lot of episodes so far that were great, episodes that were about Dawn and episodes that were not about Dawn. Blood Ties was Dawn - being who she is, the Key and everything - getting a little suspicious of all the whispers going on around her. It's her putting two and two together. She's trying to understand and cope. Real Me and No Place like Home were probably the two big ones for me. No Place Like Home was great because I, myself, got to find out what Dawn really is. Before that I did not know. I just knew that Dawn was not what she looked to be. It was fun to try to deceive the audience. Is Dawn evil? Is Dawn good? With every scene we were trying to trick the audience. You saw her with the cup of tea. Is there something poisonous in there? Am I the one poisoning Mom (Kristine Sutherland)? In the end you found out that I wasn't. And I loved the way Buffy accepted Dawn as her sister in the end. In all senses, Dawn is human. She is what she is, but she's been moulded into human form. She is now Buffy's sister and all of her memories are true because everyone accepts them to be true."


Adolescent secrets

Wait a second, though, is the 15-year-old actress really saying that series creator/producer/writer Joss Whedon didn't give her details about Dawn, wouldn't tell her what was in store, and failed to explain Dawn's role in the bigger picture? "At the beginning, I had a meeting with Joss to talk about how Dawn would develop and what the character was like," Trachtenberg explains. "The meeting was rather short because pretty much all Joss could say was, 'She's a normal teenage girl. She has crushes and opinions, blah-blah-blah. She has all the traumas that 14-year-old must go through. But she has a little secret. All I can tell you right now is that she's this force. She's this energy. We don't know the details, but have fun.'

"So it was interesting to develop Dawn. That's where Joss's brilliance stems from. When he gets an idea, he doesn't know where he's going to take it, but then he starts to develop it. I think a little bit of that rubbed off on me in the sense that I just kind of believed Dawn was who she was. I wasn't going to do anything very much different from myself because Dawn and I are both very outgoing, both very opinionated and not shy whatsoever. We also both have older sisters, so we know the whole thing about sisters bickering a little bit here and there. So I just based Dawn on a normal teenage girl. Then, as facts about her started unravelling, I could add a little bit of this in there and a little bit of that in there. I added a little bit of paranoia, in the sense that, 'Why are all these people having such odd reactions to me?'" And make no mistake, these reactions were well founded. As the key, Dawn is the be all and end all of the future. In other words, without her safe and sound, there is no future. Keeping her safe and sound falls, of course, to the already put-upon Slayer. However, Buffy has had to tread carefully around Dawn. She's just a kid, or so she thinks. Why crush her? Or expose her to danger? And, as Buffy's gotten used to the sister act, she and Dawn have not only fought like sisters, but in Listening to Fear, they dealt with the emotional fallout of Joyce's illness like genuine siblings.


Surrogate slayer

When fans discuss Dawn, they often debate impact of the character's arrival on Buffy. Technically speaking and strange as it may sound, however, Dawn has made no impact whatsoever on Buffy. "The way Joss has done it, Buffy has always known Dawn," Trachtenberg argues. "The Monk tweaked with everyone's mind so that Dawn was there always. But as a viewer, Dawn has made Buffy a little more protective of her family, a little more aware of what's going on at home. Going back to the idea that Dawn is Buffy's new mission, Buffy has become very, very protective and almost motherly to Dawn. While Mom has been sick, Buffy has taken on the role of mother and is taking care of Dawn, dealing with her maturity. Because of Dawn you've gotten to see a more sensitive side of Buffy."

And because of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, audiences have gotten to see a lot more of Trachtenberg. The talented young actress, who was born and raised in New York City, began her career in TV commercials, appearing in more than 100 of them. She then turned up as a regular in the series The Adventures of Pete and Pete, as well as the short-lived sci-fi sitcom Meego, making guest appearances on the likes of Law and Order and Space Cases. Among her big screen credits are Harriet the Spy, Inspector Gadget and Snow Day. And we won't even mention the made-for-video outing Richie Rich's Christmas Wish. Movies, she observes, are quite different from TV shows. And, to be sure, Buffy is quite different from her previous TV ventures. "In movies, you only have two hours to relate this one story and you can really only have one storyline going on," she explains. "In a series, you have the same series for x-amount of years, five so far in Buffy's case, and every week you have a new storyline for the characters to go through. In our case, it's an hour show, so it's almost like they are mini-movies that are running for years. Buffy is shot very much like a film, so the experience of making Buffy is almost exactly like making a movie. I almost like Buffy a little bit more because I get to see where the characters are going much faster. I don't have to wait until the sequel comes out. I just have to wait until next Tuesday."


Living daylights

Trachtenberg sticks to the party line so far as revealing future storylines, which is to say she'll say nothing at all about them. However, the actress expresses a desire to return next season, to learn more about her character and to keep the fans guessing about Dawn's origins, powers, intentions and motivations. All in all, she's having a Hellmouth of a good time. "I've been able to do a little bit of comedy, a little bit of drama, a little bit of sarcasm here and there," she says, bringing the conversation to a close. "I've gotten to play the insecure teen and the confident teen. I've gotten to play the scene when I say, 'Hmmm, look at me. Am I evil? Nope, I'm just mad at my sister.' I've gotten to have a lot of fun with my character, which I'm very, very fortunate to be able to say. A lot of actors, when they get a show, start out with a character they love. But then they just become bored with it. I'm not bored with Dawn and I don't think I'll ever be bored with her. There are so many holes in Dawn's mind that I haven't jumped into yet, I know that I'm talking about Dawn like she's a person, but she is. She lives in a TV world, but the way to develop a character is to believe that she is you when you are in front of the camera. It's all very exciting. Dawn is new and fresh and I've still got so much of her to show the audience."