Melanie Lynskey and More Stars Who Just Missed Out on Huge Role

In every generation, there is a chosen one. And, unfortunately for Melanie Lynskey, she was not picked to stand alongside Buffy Summers against the vampires, demons and forces of darkness. 

“It was kind of a visa issue,” the New Zealand native recently revealed on the Shut Up Evan: The Newsletter podcast of passing on the opportunity to play the slayer’s BFF Willow Rosenberg in the pilot episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “But not really. I also was not sure about doing television at that time.”

Some two-and-a-half decades before she’d star on Yellowjackets, the Coyote Ugly and Sweet Home Alabama actress explained, “I had a very old-school agent who was like, ‘TV? That’s for has-beens!'” Though she initially protested—”I was like, ‘I don’t think it is anymore'”—ultimately, she continued, “I just wasn’t super into it at the time.”

Sisters alum Riff Regan nabbed the part, but when creator Joss Whedon was looking to recast the role of the OG Scooby Gang member, he reached back out to Lynskey.