Melanie Lynskey Almost Played Willow On Buffy?! She Reveals Why She 'Wasn't Super Into It At The Time'

Yellowjackets star Melanie Lynskey came close to playing Buffy the Vampire Slayer's witchy BFF Willow Rosenberg not once but twice.

In an interview with Shut Up Evan: The Newsletter, conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike, the actress reveals that she was up for the role, but several factors contributed to her, initially, not being interested in the project, which would go on to become a TV classic and a critical darling.

"It was kind of a visa issue, but not really," the New Zealand-born actress explains, adding that she "also was not sure about doing television at that time. It was very early in my career. I had a very old-school agent who was like, 'TV? That's for has-beens!' and I was like, 'I don't think it is anymore.' Certainly now things have really changed, but I just wasn't super into it at the time."

Still, Lynskey had dinner with creator Joss Whedon. "I don't remember if it was an offer or if it was like, 'Would you come read for it?' or what it was, but we stayed in touch after that," she says. So when it was decided that the character of Willow would be recast, after a pilot presentation was shot with Riff Regan playing the part, the project came back into Lynskey's orbit.

"[Joss] said, 'Now do you think you would want to do it?'" the actress recalls. This time, Lynskey was interested, having seen the pilot: "I was like, 'Oh, this is good,' and I kind of took my agent into it. And then, it became this whole thing of, 'Well, now you have to audition.' So I auditioned. Then: 'Oh, they didn't like what you were wearing.' It was a whole process. And then I didn't get it!"

Ultimately, Alyson Hannigan landed the gig that would last for seven seasons. "[She] was absolutely wonderful and all was [cast] as it should have been," Lynskey concluded.