Darkness Before Dawn by Stephanie McGrath

From AllPop - December 14th, 2001

Sixteen-year-old Michelle Trachtenberg usually spends her days battling demons as Dawn Summers, the younger sister of Sunnydale's vampire slayer Buffy on "Buffy The Vampire Slayer".

During a brief homework hiatus, Michelle called AllPop from her home in California to discuss "Buffy", shoplifting, and SATs, among other things.

"Buffy" masterminds Joss Whedon and Marti Noxon are very strict about what secrets they allow their cast to divulge, but Michelle was allowed to hint at a few things in store for Dawn's future.

"Dawn is definitely going to be getting more rebellious in coming seasons," Michelle says. "Her little goody-two-shoes attitude is going to get a slight bit of adjustment. She's been stealing a little bit throughout last season and this season, and that's kind of a clue."

Since Dawn's introduction to all things "Buffy" when she popped up last season out of nowhere as Buffy's sister (future episodes explained that she wasn't really human but in fact some sort of magical key), she's witnessed the death of her character's mom and her sister -- not to mention having had to stake her first crush.

But Dawn's not the only character going through dark days. Buffy herself is angry with her friends for pulling her out of heaven and returning her to Earth and is romancing a potentially dangerous vampire, while the witch Willow has been stricken with a nasty magic addiction and a bad break-up.

So are there any happy endings in store for Dawn and the rest of the Scoobies?

"I don't know," says Michelle. "I think that, just like life, we go through a lot of relationships that don't end on the happiest note, and that's kind of what the writers are showing too, is that the characters that you admire go through this as well. I don't know if in the future there will be a super happy relationship. I don't know that that's reality. In reality there are many relationships that have their faults. You can be very much together, and then there's ups and downs."

According to Michelle (and a slew of television critics), "Buffy" is actually just a metaphor for reality.

"Every day we act as the slayer," explains Michelle. "The slayer battles demons, we battle obstacles. When the slayer overcomes that demon, we have overcome an obstacle and we're the better for it and the people are around us are the better for it. But then when the slayer gets hurt, then we get hurt, then we feel it, and we have to deal with the repercussions."

Michelle -- who, as a high school junior, is starting to think about SATs and college life -- says "Buffy" can use supernatural events to mirror the chaos that confronts many teens on a daily basis.

"She [Buffy] has to deal with so many things, and then there's this horrible demon that she has to go kill, and teens have to deal with their tests and doing well in school and some eventually have to start thinking about college and then all of a sudden they have a crush on a boy and the boy likes them back and then they're not sure," she says. "It's just a whole mix of things, and that's exactly what we illustrate on the show".

But that doesn't mean that everything about both "Buffy" and real life is death and demons. There are lots of funny moments, some touching moments, and at least one loving relationship.

"I know Buffy and Dawn's relationship has always been pretty much one of love," says Michelle. "It may not have been the happiest because of the circumstances that surround their relationship, but they've always been together."

In real life Michelle and Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy) have been together for quite a while, too. The two starred on the daytime soap "All My Children" together.

When Michelle started on "Buffy", "It wasn't like 'Oh, hi nice to meet you', it was like 'Hey, how are you?' We've kept in touch," says Michelle. "... She's also very wise and very smart, and I go to her a lot for advice. Sometimes when we're doing an emotional scene, the silliest thing [will happen], like a piece of my hair will fall forward 'cause I've leaned forward. Usually we'll have to stop the take, move the hair, and start from the beginning [but] she'll, like, quickly reach out, brush the hair from my face, and we'll keep on going. We won't stop.

"It's really fun when I have a scene with Sarah. Especially an emotional scene, as sad as they are. We had one on Wednesday, and it wasn't a very long scene but it was a very sweet and sentimental scene. We really connected with each other, and we were able to give back to the cameras. It's almost easy to go off script and say what we think our characters are feeling -- but of course we say what's written -- but that's how in tune Sarah is to Buffy, and I think I'm getting there more and more with Dawn."

Although Michelle is having a blast on "Buffy", she is tentatively planning on attending college just in case her job ever stops being fun.

"I love acting," she says. "It's not a job for me. I guess it's more like a hobby, because a hobby is something that you really like to do. A hobby is something that you specifically pick yourself ... so the second I start viewing it as a job, when I have to struggle to get up in the morning to go to work, then I know that there's something else that I need to do."

For now, though, Michelle is enjoying her time battling demons and melodramatic emotions on screen. She says the cast has been recently toiling away on the season's 13th episode which, like the "Buffy" musical titled "Once More With Feeling" that aired in November, might feature a bit of fancy footwork.

"All I can say is that there will be a little bit more dancing going on," she hints.

Michelle isn't allowed to expand on the dancing clue, though, so fans will have to scour the Internet spoiler sites and message boards in the hopes of finding out some new "Buffy" info. But, according to Michelle, if devotees of the show simply pay attention to their own behaviour, they should be able to deduce certain key elements scheduled for upcoming episodes.

"You can read the characters," she says. "If something happened on 'Buffy' and you could see it happening to you, and you could understand what kind of a reaction you would have, then expect the characters to have that kind of reaction as well. I guess the world of 'Buffy', as complex as it is, is almost simple to decode, because it's just life ..."