Buffy Tears, Buffy Laughter

white avenger

white avenger
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Has anyone else ever noticed that Sarah had a tremendously larger amount of scenes where she cries, or is just sad/depressed, than she did as being happy. I can only remember a very few times when she actually laughed. Granted, being ths Slayer on the hellmouth isn't the sort of think that leads itself to a great amount of merriment, but still...

And I've never seen Sarah laugh much if at all in any of her other roles over the years. I wonder if she has a problem with faking laughter...
 
i dunno i think buffy's character was always just torn between having to make the hardest decisions ever. choosing loves, dealing with the fact that people around her were dying, not to mention the whole dawn is the key thing. she had a lot of burdens. as for other roles i dunno! her fake laughing cracks me up though. i love it.
 
in the directors commentary for either two to go or grave im pretty sure i remember joss saying that buffy hates faking laughter but can put the tears on easily. not to sure of the exact quote though.
 
I can remember her laughing a few times but yes she was sad a lot. She had a lot of hardships so I guess it make sense. One laugh I have stuck in my head is when she and giles are going to the back of the magic shop and he is telling her that he watched passions with spike and not to repeat it...that laugh she did is contagious.
 
probably because laughing was the one weakness in her acting - think of her laughing when Xander told her harmony had minions or when parker asks if she used to date Spike or at the end of season 6 when giles comes back and they laugh about the total mess that is their lives - it's just so forced! she's a much better crier.
 
I'm of the mind, as Tranquility pointed out, that laughing on cue is quite hard for Gellar, it seemed to be a strain. I mean it was so obviously fake.

Besides, its Buffy the Vamp Slayer, we don't want our heroine to be in a good happy laughy mood, we want her quite dour, sad and sorrowful.
 
Now that I think about it, I can't really think of very many movies that she's been in where she laughs. Maybe a grin with a small laugh, but never a but gusting laugh.

But then again, I can't really think of too many people that can pull off a hearty fake laugh.
 
very true - fake laughter is very hard to do. That being said, Buffy looks gorgeous when she's sort of laughing while Giles is dangling a crystal in front of her in - i think - Restless. the commentary says they had to get her laughing for real to make it look that good
 
The fake laugh I remember the most, is in "Real Me', when Xander tells Buffy that Harmony had minions and she came to kill her. Oh, and when Buffy tells Giles (season 6) about what happened during the time he was gone.

Yes, it is very hard to fake laugh, been thought it myself. But to most people it's harder to cry, so cheers for Sarah.
 
P
Panda
lmao i laughed so hard in that scene
I thought the laughing scene in "Real Me" was well done, actually. It was not nearly as fake as some fake laughing, and in fact it seemed like Sarah might have actually been laughing. Regardless, it made me laugh.
 
I think she laughed more in the earlier seasons. The "highschool" years. The show was complicated and sad, but overall, I think it was a lot more care-free. There were lots of Xander, Willow, Buffy hanging out, giggling, having fun ... Like regular teenage friends. But once college came about, and then Dawn, and then Joyce, and no laughter anymore. Well, some, but not much.

But in the highschool years, there were some definitely some good laughing scenes. That was one of the reasons I got hooked -- Those adorable laughing scenes.
 
She laughed when she said she was sleeping with Spike to giles at the end of S6. and another time in the show in which i forgot about .
 
i was watching my buffy dvd with the commontary on on the episode real me and they said for some reasons she's self-concious about laughing
 
when it comes down to it SMG is a great crier. alot of the big laughs we see her do in later seasons seem forced, but they do appear more realistic in the early seasons when buffy's with xander & willow and they're just goofing around and having fun being around one another. of course it makes sense that as the seasons progress buffy's laughter would die down because, just look at all that she went through. seasons 1-4 were "lighter" than 5-7 for her, causing more pain and crying scenes to show up later on than laughing ones. which worked out perfectly since SMG has trouble with genuine laughing in a scene. but in that "restless" scene where giles dangles the watch in front of her... joss said in the commentary for that episode that he was standing behind the camera making funny faces at sarah to get her to laugh real. and it worked great, because i really like the way she laughs in that scene. you can definitely tell it's her real laughter.
 
when it comes down to it SMG is a great crier. alot of the big laughs we see her do in later seasons seem forced, but they do appear more realistic in the early seasons when buffy's with xander & willow and they're just goofing around and having fun being around one another. of course it makes sense that as the seasons progress buffy's laughter would die down because, just look at all that she went through. seasons 1-4 were "lighter" than 5-7 for her, causing more pain and crying scenes to show up later on than laughing ones. which worked out perfectly since SMG has trouble with genuine laughing in a scene. but in that "restless" scene where giles dangles the watch in front of her... joss said in the commentary for that episode that he was standing behind the camera making funny faces at sarah to get her to laugh real. and it worked great, because i really like the way she laughs in that scene. you can definitely tell it's her real laughter.

Yea if anything she can cry her ass off and look sad. There are soo many moments. The bast i think though was in "I will rember You"
 
for me personally, i think it's better to have have an actor or actress who can cry better than they can laugh. just because fake laughing... everybody has a different laugh so it's understandable to take whatever laugh we're giving from a person as it is, y'know unless we can tell it's REALLY forced and trying too hard. but crying, that takes talent to pull of realistically. because fake crying when not done well is just so unbelievable that it almost cheapens the scene or the show or whatever from the bad performance. so go on SMG! 🙂
 
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