Director’s bizarre excuse for multiple affairs

“If I am upsetting somebody, it will be a problem for me,” Whedon, 57, told New York Magazine of his reasoning as to why negative descriptions of his behaviour on the sets of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel weren’t fully factual and his intentions not malicious.

“I don’t believe that,” he said, shaking his head, in response to a costume designer’s accusation that he’d grabbed her arm. “I know I would get angry, but I was never physical with people.”

He also denied an allegation from a “high-level member of the Buffy production team” that he reportedly once made out with an actress on the floor of an office, reports the New York Post.

“That seems false. I don’t understand that story even a little bit,” he said, before removing his glasses, rubbing his face, telling the reporter he needed to go to the bathroom and then, upon his return, further explaining that it didn’t make sense because he “lived in terror” of his affairs being found out.

Those affairs, however, he did at least admit to having happened and regretting. Whedon was married to Kai Cole from 1995 to 2016. Cole accused her ex-husband of having had “multiple affairs” with his young female ingénues in a scathing letter she published in 2017.

“I feel f***ing terrible about them,” he said, adding that such affairs with a director mess “up the power dynamic”. He defended his decision to have them at the time, though, noting that he felt he “had” to sleep with beautiful young women he was surrounded by and was “powerless” to resist.

The reporter laughed in response to the comment, to which Whedon retorted: “I’m not actually joking.”

“He had been surrounded by beautiful young women – the sort of women who had ignored him when he was younger – and he feared if he didn’t have sex with them, he would ‘always regret it,’” New York Magazine reported. “Looking back, he feels shame and ‘horror’, he said.”

Representatives for Whedon did not return The Post’s request for further comment.

Buffy, Angel stars speak out

Trouble started for Whedon last February when Buffy actress Charisma Carpenter, who played Cordelia Chase, and then Michelle Trachtenberg – who played Sarah Michelle Gellar’s title character’s younger sister, Dawn Summers – came out with bombshell claims of alleged abusive behaviour.

“Joss Whedon abused his power on numerous occasions while working on the sets of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel,” Carpenter, 51, claimed at the time. “While he found his misconduct amusing, it only served to intensify my performance anxiety, disempower me and alienate me from my peers. The disturbing incidents triggered a chronic physical condition from which I still suffer. It is with a beating, heavy heart that I say I coped in isolation and, at times, destructively.”

“I was not mannerly,” Whedon told New York Magazine of Carpenter’s allegations. “Most of my experiences with Charisma were delightful and charming. She struggled sometimes with her lines, but nobody could hit a punch line harder than her.”

Trachtenberg, meanwhile, came out to say there “was a rule” that Whedon was “not allowed in a room alone with” the now-35-year-old actress, who was 15 at the time she starred in the show.

Both David Boreanaz and Sarah Michelle Gellar stood in solidarity with their co-stars.

“While I am proud to have my name associated with Buffy Summers, I don’t want to be forever associated with the name Joss Whedon,” Gellar, 44, wrote. “I stand with all survivors of abuse and am proud of them for speaking out.”

Elsewhere in the lengthy New York Magazine article, Whedon also denied allegations made by Justice League stars Ray Fisher and Gal Gadot. The director said Fisher, 34, is a “bad actor” and chalked 36-year-old Gadot’s issues up to a communication issue.

He claimed: “English is not her first language, and I tend to be annoyingly flowery in my speech.”

This article originally appeared in the New York Post and was reproduced with permission

Originally published as Buffy director Joss Whedon offers bizarre excuse for multiple affairs