Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s Most Unappreciated Star Is Taking Over Social Media
One of my more persistent middle-aged traits is that I’ve never really cottoned to TikTok. Every time I try to use it, I can practically feel it giving me ADHD. Because of that, it took me a hot minute to discover that one of the biggest stars of Buffy the Vampire Slayer has been busy taking over social media, and she’s now promising something that will overjoy her greatest fans. Charisma Carpenter, who famously played Cordelia Chase, is now surveying her TikTok fans about whether they’d be interested in her helming a Buffy rewatch podcast.
Charisma Carpenter On TikTok
In case you share my antipathy for TikTok, you might not realize how busy Charisma Carpenter has been keeping Buffy fans entertained. She’s entertaining everything from wild fan questions about how David Boreanaz smells to fawning fan adoration for “naughty…potty mouth.” However, none of her content has made quite as much of a splash as her asking whether fans would want her to make a rewatch podcast, and for good reason: should she be willing to spill the tea, few actors in Joss Whedon’s vampire slaying universe have a more compelling story to share.
One reason for this is that Charisma Carpenter managed to walk the line between two major franchises, serving as a main cast member on Buffy the Vampire Slayer before transitioning to the moody Angel spinoff after Buffy’s third season ended. To put it mildly, Angel was completely different in terms of setting, cast, and overall tone, and I’d love to hear more about how Carpenter adapted her party-girl character to a new, noirish world of “whodunit” mysteries.
For example, Angel’s early episodes often seem to treat Cordelia as someone in her early 20s rather than an 18-year-old recent high school grad, and we’d love to hear how much of that was intentional and how much was accidental. As for the show itself, Angel evolved so fast and so drastically that each season felt dramatically different from the one before, and it would be rewarding to learn how Charisma Carpenter navigated this after leaving Buffy (a show that remained largely the same until, ironically enough, her departure).
For those of us who enjoy hearing about messy, behind-the-scene drama, though, the most compelling reason to listen to Charisma Carpenter’s Buffy rewatch podcast (assuming it ever makes it off the ground) is to see if she dishes more about franchise creator Joss Whedon. Whedon once enjoyed a reputation as Hollywood’s most prominent feminist, and one of the reasons that changed is that Carpenter took to X (formerly Twitter) and described the man as having a“history of being casually cruel.”
She alleged that he called her “fat” after she became pregnant, questioned if she’d keep the child, blamed her for her pregnancy sabotaging the show, and then fired her after she gave birth. The actor was understandably looking forward to being a mother, but she alleges that this joy “was sucked right out,” and she knew exactly who to blame: “Joss was the vampire.”
Long story not very short, I’m here for Charisma Carpenter revisiting her Buffy glory days on TikTok, and I’m especially down for her hosting a rewatch podcast. She clearly still has a great passion for her character and this entire fictional universe, which is evident from her hilarious online videos as well as her role in the surprisingly excellent audio drama Slayers: A Buffyverse Story. And if she wants to spill an entire gallon of tea about all the behind-the-scenes drama that went into the most ambitious urban fantasy shows in network history, that’s just a Cordelia-shaped cherry on top of her complete social media domination.
Login with Google