Ben Affleck Remembers Disappointing Buffy the Vampire Slayer Performance

Do you remember Ben Affleck in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie? Of course you do! Hard to let such an unforgettable performance fade from the mind, but incredibly, though Affleck’s “Uncredited Basketball Player #10” was surely a key piece of the Buffy puzzle back in 1992, his character is generally more commonly referred to as “hey, was that …was that Ben Affleck?”

Hard to believe. Powerful, and underrated.

In a new interview with The Jess Cagle Show on SiriusXM, Affleck certainly hadn’t blocked out his early Buffy the Vampire Slayer experience, as the actor explained how the movie, which was his first proper appearance on the big screen, led to some cringeworthy disappointment when he realised that his dramatic one-line reading of “take it” clearly hadn’t blown director Fran Rubel Kuzui away during the shoot.

“Apparently, I am so bad in that movie that my one line — it was ‘take it,’ I think — I thought it was fine and the director seemed happy,” Affleck recalled in the midst of promoting his new feature, The Way Back. “I went to the movie — I didn’t get premiere tickets or anything — and I was like… that is not my voice! That is not me! Apparently the director hated my performance so much that she looped the entire performance, which was one line. Yes, I was dubbed. In English!”

The movie version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer may not have had a particularly huge impact on audiences during the early 90s, but it did eventually lead to a spin-off series for its writer, Joss Whedon, and the show’s subsequent seven-season run is still considered to be a groundbreaking undertaking that has inspired countless TV projects since it came to a close in 2003.

Affleck has been more open about his various career disappointments in recent months, spending a little more time addressing his departure from the helm of solo Dark Knight movie The Batman – now in the hands of director Matt Reeves and star Robert Pattinson – and his decision to hang up the cowl for good after popping up just twice as the iconic character in Zack Snyder’s DC efforts, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League. 

Though Affleck has previously indicated that work on The Batman was in jeopardy due to his addiction problems at the time, he now says that other factors were also in play.

“I had an opportunity to write and direct and star in a stand-alone Batman,” Affleck said. “And it just happened at a point in my life where I just kind of lost interest in those stories. I’ll go see Robert’s, I think it’s gonna be great, he’s great, but [The Way Back] is the kind of story that I’m interested in telling now.”