Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr are the couple that, every once in a while, you wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat worrying about. Headlines of “shock split” and “call it quits” swim across your vision as you frantically Google to make sure - phew, okay, they’re fine.
Nineties icons Prinze Jr and Gellar have been together for over 25 years. They met in 1997 while filming slasher flick “I Know What You Did Last Summer” alongside Jessica Love Hewitt and Ryan Phillippe, then tied the knot in 2002.
However, considering their status as prom king and queen of the 1990s — Gellar for her role as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Prinze Jr for his roles in teen movies and rom coms such as She’s All That — the two are lowkey as a couple, which is what makes last night’s red carpet appearance together so cute.
The pair haven’t actually been spotted on a red carpet together for 15 years, with their last outing dating back to 2007, for the premiere of the movie musical Hairspray.
But the lovebirds finally emerged from their red carpet hiatus to attend the premiere of Gellar’s new Paramount+ series Wolf Pack at the Harmony Gold Theatre in Los Angeles.
The two looked as loved up as they did 15 years ago at the Hairspray premiere, with an Oscar De La Renta-clad Gellar posing for pictures hand in hand with her husband.
Prinze Jr was dressed down in an all black look, complete with a bomber jacket and a black trilby. It’s far from his most casual premiere look, though. Remember, this man was at the peak of his fame in the late 90s, the days of wearing jeans to premieres.
In fact, in 2004 he did just that, while standing alongside his wife at the premiere for Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, in what may have been the most casual pair of movie premiere looks ever.
But this is the thing about Prinze Jr and Gellar: they are eternally low-key. The two are so chilled that they didn’t even make an effort to start dating back in 2000 — they ended up doing accidentally.
Prinze Jr told People Magazine back in 2002 that the pair “really didn’t dig each other” at first, presumably when filming I Know What You Did Last Summer. Gellar even made a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in 1999’s She’s All That, but the two remained as friends until 2000, when they accidentally ended up on a date because a third friend didn’t turn up.
"We were friends for a very long time. We'd had many dinners before. And we were supposed to go with someone else, and the third person didn't make it out and we decided to still go," Gellar told People Now in 2020.
"We were just two people at dinner catching up,” she added. “We had a long car ride and a long dinner and things just happened."
Things did indeed happen. Within a year they were engaged, within another year they were married, and now the pair have two children together — Charlotte Grace, 13, and Rocky James, 10.
Given the tumultuous nature of A-list relationships, it’s nice to always know that Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr will provide a guiding light. And if they do for some reason part ways one day, I will simply give up on love.
