Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Amber Benson reflects on the gay couple that changed TV forever

Who would've guessed two witches on a teen show about vampires would become one of the most important couples in television history?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer first premiered on The WB in 1997 but its legacy still lives on 27 years later. For many LGBTQ+ people, myself included, Willow and Tara's relationship was the first queer couple they'd ever seen, on TV AND in real life. It was one of the first ever long-term lesbian relationship shown on U.S. television and paved the way for the LGBTQ+ representation we see in mainstream media today.

Out caught up with Amber Benson, the actor who played Tara opposite Alyson Hannigan's Willow, at Tubi's Buffy's Biggest Slays event at The Abbey in West Hollywood earlier this month, and she says she looks back on those years fondly

"As an actor, you do a ton of work where you're like, 'Okay, I did this thing and it's fine and I paid my bills.' But with Buffy, I felt like I was part of something important and that what we were doing was not just a television show," she shares. "It was at hand to people who were living in places where there wasn't a community. I know Aly[son Hannigan] felt the same way, that this relationship was iconic in so many ways. It was also about empathy and love. Willow and Tara raised Dawn, you know, and before all the bananas stuff happened, their relationship was so special and important."

Of course, those monumental network television moments didn't come without a reaction.

"We got a lot of pushback from standards and practices," Benson recalls. "They were like, 'Oh, girls kissing girls in bed together. Oh my gosh. We just, we don't know what to do with this.' It was very frustrating." Willow and Tara's scenes had to be carefully managed, meanwhile Buffy and Spike were dry-humping on sarcophaguses.

Benson recalls a crew member in the art department taking her aside to say, "Yeah, it's stupid and annoying that you guys can't kiss or you can't be in the bed or whatever but what you have to understand is that this relationship, this positive relationship goes into people's homes every week. You are changing people's perceptions of what it means to be queer. You are talking to people in other parts of the world, our crazy country especially, who are watching this show but have never met a queer couple in real life but love Tara and Willow."

"It totally changed how we saw things and we were like, yeah, doesn't matter what we do anymore. It's just that we exist in this moment and we are a hand to people who don't have that."

Despite it all, she never received too much hate, besides a passive-aggressive gift.

"I always expected to get nasty letters," she says. "I didn't get anything. I got some religious, 'Jesus loves you,' but never got any nasty mail. The only thing I did get was, I'm not kidding, a giant box of caffeinated mints? And all I could think was either somebody really doesn't like Tara, or someone on the set is like your breath is pretty stinky."

The queer legacy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer still lives on, directly and indirectly, in today's culture. Tubi celebrated the debut of the series on their streaming platform with a Q&A with Benson and a Buffy-themed drag show. I never thought I'd witness a drag king dressed as Spike performing "Creep" by Radiohead, or locking eyes with Miss Scion in an eerily convincing drag as the ancient vampire Drusilla.

Stewart Cook, Courtesy of Tubi

The series was also recently homaged in Jane Schoenbrun's horror film I Saw The TV Glow, where Benson made a cameo.

"I read the script and I was like, 'Oh, can I, can I come do craft service on that? I just want to do something. I just want to be there.'" She says she was moved by "this idea of finding your family and finding who you are and coming out of this place where you don't fit and finding a place where you do fit." Benson met with Schoenbrun over Zoom and was invited to make a cameo.

"You see me for two seconds. Justice [Smith] comes back to the neighborhood and he goes to the door of a friend and he's having that very emotional almost breakdown. And I open the door, I'm the mom of the friend, and I hug him."

Buffy the Vampire Slayer's impact is everywhere, and now fans, both new and old, can revisit the iconic series that paved the way for so much of the LGBTQ+ representation we have today.

"We want to bring shows that have been popular to generations before us through different avenues of distribution to generations now through a free platform, give everybody access to it, make it as widely available as possible and effectively re-release it," Alonso Carillo, Sr Manager of Content Acquisitions at Tubi, tells Out.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is now available to stream for free on Tubi.