Credit: Dangerous Minds / 20th Century Fox

As we all learned much to our chagrin recently, there will never be another television show quite like Buffy The Vampire Slayer again.

Now, that’s not to say there won’t be witty, action-packed, genre-mashing cult TV hits driven by female heroines anymore. People will always want to watch those, although I did write that statement thinking there would be a major TV hit at the moment that fits that description, yet none really come to mind, yet TV is in a very different place than it was in the late 1990s, and the fact is that while seemingly endless shows get made, if they’re not Stranger Things, then you’re lucky to get past season one. Buffy The Vampire Slayer was not Stranger Things.

Buffy had a huge cult following but was never the ratings smash that it kept threatening to be, but that was enough for Buffy to stay on the air for seven seasons, generate a five-season-long spin-off in the form of Angel and make a star out of many people involved in it, from a fistful of its lead actors to (regrettably) its showrunner… Fast forward to 2026 and a reboot of the show, spearheaded by its lead actor, Sarah Michelle Gellar and a literal Academy Award winner in the form of Chloé Zhao, was cancelled before production ever began.

Gellar detailed the reason behind the reboot’s cancellation in a video she posted to Instagram. One where you could clearly feel how raw and upset Gellar was by the predicament. In it, she talked about an executive at Hulu who had boasted about how much he didn’t like the show and trying to get him on board with a show he fundamentally doesn’t understand was impossible. This wasn’t all that different to the snow’s experience in the 1990s, but with one major difference.

They also had an immensely powerful producer in their corner, who loved the show and would continuously go to bat for it, despite never once being credited for it.

Who was this mystery ‘Buffy’ producer?

When Gellar appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, she let slip a secret that the show had been guarding for decades – it was none other than country megastar Dolly Parton who was a producer on the show and was a firm defender of it behind the scenes, something that Dolly fan Gellar was bowled over by when she finally heard about it, with Entertainment Weekly quoting her as saying, “I was, like, ‘I can die now. Dolly Parton knows who I am.’”

Buffy wasn’t the ‘Jolene’ hitmaker’s only foray into the industry either. We, of course, know about her turns in 9 to 5 and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, but she was active behind the scenes as well. She formed the production company Sandollar Productions with her business partner Sandy Gallin for more control over the acting roles she took, and was instrumental in producing hits like Steel Magnolias and  Father of the Bride. Then, the company took a gamble, purchasing a strange little screenplay from an up-and-coming writer called Joss Whedon called Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

In 1992, they turned this screenplay into the initial film of the property, and while it wasn’t a hit, Sandollar still owned the rights to the property when Whedon was asked to turn it into a TV series, which is why Parton became a major force supporting Buffy from behind the scenes, yet very few people, including many of the show’s own stars, had any idea.

Here’s hoping that if Buffy can’t have that kind of support itself in 2026, some other scrappy, imaginative story can get it instead.