By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
There are many reasons fans enjoy Buffy the Vampire Slayer so much, from the compelling characters to the eminently quotable dialogue. And, of course, all the great romances fueled by some of the hottest onscreen chemistry in network TV history. For many, there was no greater chemistry than that between Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz, but their steamiest scenes weren’t so sexy during production for a wildly weird reason: whenever Buffy and Angel shared a kiss, their breath was absolutely awful due to insane Gellar’s insane pranks.
Bad Romance
This bizarre ritual between Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz goes back to their first Buffy kiss in the season 1 episode “Angel.” In an unforgettable moment, Angel reveals his feelings to Buffy and kisses her…leading to the revelation that he’s a vampire in love with the Slayer who has been charged with hunting and killing his kind. But thanks to Joss Whedon’s DVD commentary, we know the scene was equally unforgettable for the actors for a very different reason: “They both ate as many horrible things as they could before they kissed, just to be fun.”
While Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz both tried to prank each other during that first Buffy kiss, it was apparently Gellar that kept this tradition going whenever they had to be physically intimate onscreen together. Her explicit goal (sorry, ‘shippers) was to make their sexy scenes as “unsexy” as she possibly could, and the chief way she did this was to eat weird stuff before the onscreen smooching began. This included nasty combinations like pickles and fish that ensured her breath smelled worse than a vampire’s coffin before Buffy and Angel ever locked lips.
More Than Bad Breath
Sometimes, Sarah Michelle Gellar didn’t settle for sabotaging her breath before a Buffy/Angel kiss and instead opted for pulling other hilarious pranks. A great example of this is that she would deliberately pin her clothes very tightly to herself before scenes where their characters were supposed to get hot and heavy. Poor David Boreanaz would have to make their onscreen intimacy still look both naughty and nice while making out with a costar whose clothes were stuck very rigidly in place.
On another occasion, Sarah Michelle Gellar decided to prank David Boreanaz on his own show with a prank in the Angel episode “I Will Remember You,” where Buffy and Angel did much more than kiss. This was an episode where the vampire was transformed into a human, letting him and Buffy finally do the deed without him losing his soul. Unfortunately, he discovers the world needs his vampiric strength and turns back time to make himself a creature of the night once more. It’s a powerful and emotional episode, until you learn Gellar deliberately spilled ice cream on Boreanaz trying to mess up one of his takes.
It might ruin the magic to learn that Sarah Michelle Gellar tried to spoil every Buffy kiss with Angel with bad breath and other pranks, but there’s a silver lining to this particular tale. All the pranks actually helped the two actors bond, and they continued hanging out and having big fun with each other even after Boreanaz began starring in Bones. He’d invite her to the set so they could snack on craft services together, which might never have happened if Gellar hadn’t decided to snack on the world’s nastiest food before making out with one of television’s hunkiest dudes.