Wolf Pack showrunner Jeff Davis says Buffy star Sarah Michelle Gellar was in “ass-kicking” mode from the very first day on set.

According to Wolf Pack creator and showrunner Jeff Davis, star Sarah Michelle Gellar was back in “fighting form” from the first day on set.

“I didn’t understand what we had until we were cutting the first trailer, and I watched a scene of her breaking through a fence with a gun,” Davis told The Hollywood Reporter. “Oh, shit. We didn’t just get Sarah Michelle Gellar, we got the one everybody’s been waiting to see for years: the ass-kicking Sarah Michelle Gellar.”

Related: How Sarah Michelle Gellar Aims to Protect Wolf Pack’s Younger Actors

Gellar herself spoke about her new role in Wolf Pack and what it means for her career. “To come back, to get projects made, you have to pay homage to what you’re known for,” she said. The award-winning actor hopes to speak to her fanbase while simultaneously gaining new fans along the way. “It’s not a next act for me, but it’s certainly a new chapter,” Gellar added.

While she’s excited to get on with some “ass-kicking,” Gellar also hopes to create safer sets and to be valued for her discipline. The Buffy The Vampire Slayer star spoke out recently about the “toxic,” male-dominated environments associated with her earlier projects. “I hope that I’ve set up an infrastructure, a safety net for these actors that I didn’t have,” she said.

Starring Armani Jackson and Bella Shepard along with Gellar as arson investigator Kristin Ramsey, Wolf Pack is an upcoming Paramount+ show about teenage werewolves based on the novel of the same name by Edo van Belkom. The series, set against the backdrop of the California wildfires, will follow Everett (Armani) and Blake (Shephard), two teenagers who are bitten by a supernatural creature. The series marks Gellar’s long-awaited return to television.

Related: Wolf Pack Is Being Pitched as ‘More Sophisticated’ Than Teen Wolf

How Is Wolf Pack Connected to Teen Wolf?

Incidentally, Davis also created Teen Wolf, MTV’s immensely popular teenage supernatural drama about werewolves. Davis previously opened up about what drew him to work on a new show based on the same foundation. “What drew me in, eventually, was the ties to environmentalism, the whole idea of placing it against the backdrop of a California wildfire and the struggles that teens are dealing with today — and people in their twenties — with anxiety, depression and lack of connection because of social media and technology,” he said.

While both shows share a similar premise, Davis confirmed that Wolf Pack is not a spinoff of Teen Wolf. “I know that everybody gets confused by it, but I always say, ‘Nobody thinks Twilight is in the same universe as Interview With the Vampire,'” he highlighted. He believes that two werewolf shows can exist within “separate spaces,” and the Wolf Pack team has consciously tried to do things differently with the upcoming show.

Wolf Pack premieres Jan. 26 on Paramount+.

Source: THR