[Sarah walks out and shakes hands with Conan and co-host, Andy.]
SMG: (to Andy) I hate staring contests also. I'm the worst at staring contests.
CONAN: You're no good at those?
SMG: I just bust up laughing.
CONAN: Oh really?
SMG: I'm so bad.
CONAN: I can usually stare. I just go into another world.
SMG: Really? I just laugh instantly.
CONAN: Oh really?
SMG: I'm the person who (makes face like she's trying to hold back a laugh)
CONAN: That's great. I like that.
SMG: Thank you.
CONAN: I need an audience full of people like you. Laugh at anything.
SMG: Okay, so we have to talk about this.
CONAN: I understand you've got an issue with me.
SMG: I have a small issue.
CONAN: Okay.
SMG: So I watch, you know, the show in my trailer usually cause we're still working at this hour...on "Buffy."
CONAN: You don't live in a trailer. It's like a movie set kinda thing.
SMG: My family does it. They call me like the trailer park queen. They think I actually do. And I'm not sure if that's a compliment. But I'm watching the show, and you're doing random mating.
CONAN: It's called, "If They Mated."
SMG: If they mated, if they mated. You have Mathew Perry and I. Now...
CONAN: Let me explain, "If They Mated," is where we take celebrities who we hear are going out and we see what their child is going to look like.
SMG: And I don't know where they get their information, but I was not dating Mathew Perry. I've actually never met him. But if we did procreate, I'm just saying, the kid would be better looking than Billy Ray Cyrus. Nothing personal to Billy Ray Cyrus.
CONAN: Who is Billy Ray Cyrus? Let's take a look at this.
[Show's picture of Mathew Perry and Sarah Michelle Gellar]
CONAN: No. Well, first of all, the tabloids said that you guys were dating. And that's legally all we need.
SMG: Well, you should stop reading the tabloids.
CONAN: The legal department says that's good enough and this is the two of you and this was going to be your child. This is what we took a look at.
[Shows picture of Mathew Perry and Sarah Michelle Gellar's face's morphed together.]
SMG: Now, back me up. Would we not have a better-looking child than that? If we were going to have a child.
CONAN: That is a mutant Billy Ray Cyrus.
SMG: See, Billy Ray Cyrus.
Andy: Computers don't lie.
SMG: Remind me never to have a child with Mathew Perry then.
CONAN: Okay. I'll give you a post-it. Uh, let's talk about the show, "Buffy" for a second because before I saw the show, I heard about that they were going to do this show. And I had actually seen you somewhere doing an interview and for some reason, I just didn't think that you would be doing these kind of intense action scenes. And I start watching the show. You a great athlete. You're great in these action scenes. And you're actually trained in combat. Is that right?
SMG: Yeah. I studied Tae Kwon Do for about four, five years when I lived here in New York. And now I'm studying kickboxing, a little gymnastics, and a little street fighting.
CONAN: So you could beat me up in like forty seconds? You know, pretty much.
SMG: Well, I'll give you forty-five. Come on.
CONAN: This is how I fight. (Flails hands in air and yells) Uh, that's my fight. I actually studied that. That's a little know martial art called...
SMG: The doggie paddle. The doggie paddle.
CONAN: Shriek and go like this. (Flails arms) And hope everybody freaks out and walks away. But I'm watching the show, and on the show, you're very super confident. You can take on five guys at once, beat 'em up, but in the movies, there's a trend that you're always the victim.
SMG: Victim 101.
CONAN: Is that, in "Scream 2," and "I Know What You Did Last Summer," there's a trend that you have to be someone who runs away. Is that hard, making that transition from "Buffy" to someone who's just a victim?
SMG: It's funny at first you think, "Ah, its no big deal." And I go, Ooh look at the bad man, and I'm going to run away.
CONAN: Do you actually say it?
SMG: Yeah. (In funny voice) Oh, look bad man. But you realize that you look like you know what you're doing and normally you'll wear comfortable shoes cause they don't see your feet so I'm putting on like big strappy heals and I'm sticking rocks in my shoes and I'm actually doing the 'Conan.' I'm flailing my arms...
CONAN: Don't call it doing the "Conan." I don't want that to catch on. Don't panic anyone and whatever you do, don't do the "Conan!" So you actually work on it. You work on...
SMG: You have to work at not looking like you know what you're doing because otherwise they'd be like, "Okay, the man in the mask would not beat you. The man in the mask has to kill you."
CONAN: Right. So you really put rocks in your shoes?
SMG: I put pebbles, and rocks and anything I could find on the ground in North Carolina. Stick it in my shoes.
CONAN: Just so that you'd look...
SMG: Wobbly.
CONAN: Wobbly.
SMG: Wobbly.
CONAN: Because a victim is a wobbly runner.
SMG: Well a victim isn't like, you know, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, sprinting across. You know, you gotta look like you don't know what you're doing.
CONAN: And also, I've noticed in horror movies a lot, usually the monster or the bad guy or the slasher, whoever, is moving really slowly and the person's running like thirty miles an hour through the woods. And then they cut again and there's like this much (shows space with hands about a foot wide.) distance between them.
SMG: Let me give you "the talk". Which is, you know, you are all paranoid and you're not thinking straight. But the killer is calm.
CONAN: He's toying with you.
SMG: And he knows he's just going to catch you at a weak moment. There's all these things like you always have to be in bad shoes. If you're the girl home alone, you're always wearing heals in the house for no reason. [To audience] Have you noticed that? You're watching a horror movie, you're sitting at home watching of course, 'Friday the Thirteenth' or whatever horror movie, and they're sitting in heals. I don't know about you, but I don't wear heals at my house if I'm just sitting around.
CONAN: I do and let me tell you something. It's comfortable, and it makes me look more attractive.
[Commercial break]
CONAN: You got started in this business, um, I came into this later. I mean I started after college.
SMG: I was four.
CONAN: But you were four when you got started.
SMG: I was four. I was eating in a restaurant and some woman came up to me and said, "Do you want to be on TV?" and I said, "Oh yes, of course I do." No idea what I was doing.
CONAN: Right. And you did, was it "Burger King" ads?
ANDY: Were you dining alone?
SMG: Yes actually, I was.
ANDY: Were your parents there?
SMG: I was on a play date actually.
CONAN: Eating a cheeseburger, smoking a cigarette.
SMG: I was actually eating with Mathew Perry so go figure.
CONAN: A six-year-old Mathew Perry.
SMG: We were cute then.
CONAN: So it was for "Burger King" that you did a bunch of ads? And they got you in trouble.
SMG: It was a very famous lawsuit. It was the first company to every use another company's name in a commercial. So I was four, and I said, "Do I look 20% smaller to you? I must to 'McDonald's'." And it was the first time. We take that for granted now that every time you see an ad, they go: this is better than this. So "McDonald's" turned around and sued not only J. Walker Thompson, and Burger King, but me.
CONAN: They sued a four-year-old?
SMG: Now, mind you, where do all four-year-olds have their birthday parties? At "McDonald's" -- at the Playground. The problem was I couldn't go to any of my friend's parties.
CONAN: Why?
SMG: Truth in advertising. Everything you see on television is true.
CONAN: (jokingly acting brainwashed) I agree 100%. (Turns to audience) You must agree too. No! (Laughing) What do you mean? If you had gone to "McDonald's," then that would have meant that you...
SMG: If I was eating their hamburgers, I would have proven that I don't eat Burger King, that I eat "McDonald's." So I couldn't go. And then one of my really, really good friends had a party there and I think my mom dressed me up in straw hat and sunglasses and pigtails.
CONAN: But what? They're were going to have security like, "That four year old. We're suing her ass. Get her out of here."
SMG: You know the tabloids. They find you.
CONAN: That's amazing. That's an amazing story. Did you know what was going on at the time that you were being sued?
SMG: All I knew was I couldn't go to Katie's birthday party. That's where I was.
CONAN: That was the extent of it.
SMG: I couldn't have a happy meal.
CONAN: Yeah. And that was all because it was the first time. I mean it used to be, when I was growing up, that ads would say, "Burger King. Our burgers are better than that *other* burger." But they wouldn't say it and you're ad was pretty much you saying McDonald's sucks. Don't eat McDonald's.
SMG: That was the director's cut, actually.
CONAN: Okay. That was the slogan they almost went for. In preparation for this interview, I was reading 'Rolling Stone' magazine.
SMG: Oh God. (Anticipates the showing of the cover)
CONAN: Where you were giving some advice.
SMG: Oh. (Calms down)
CONAN: And there's this section of the interview where you're saying, I've got advice for people out there. And I thought it would be like how to get into acting or whatever.
SMG: Well everybody knows how to do that. That's on every talk show.
CONAN: Yeah right. You actually are giving information like, 'Raise legs, if you're going to take a nap, above your chest and it will double your nap time.' And I was like, 'What are you talking about?'
SMG: No, it's true. People always get this wrong. It's not for sleep time; it's naptime. So if you're in the middle of the day and you've had a rough day, you have to be up at night. You're staying up to watch the show, and you wanna, you know, get some nap time earlier. So what you do is you sit down and you raise your legs above your heart level. And it changes the way the blood pumps into the heart. You see, normally if you take an hour nap, you get up and you're all groggy. This way, you only get a twenty-minute nap but for your body it's like an hour nap.
CONAN: That's, how did you find this out? Are you some evil scientist on the weekend?
SMG: Uh, it's an old skater and dancer trick. And I went to school with a bunch of dancers.
CONAN: And it works?
SMG: Yeah, it's great. I can't take an hour nap in the middle of the day cause I get up and I'm all, "What?" You know that whole morning thing again.
CONAN: Right, you're drooling, and crazy and stuff.
SMG: And my thoughts are all over the place. And this way, it's only like a twenty-minute nap to the brain.
CONAN: What I do is, if I take a nap in the middle of the day, and the phone wakes me up, and I answer it, I'm incoherent for the first...
SMG: You said you knew what you were saying today, when I called you...What?
CONAN: I always talk like that. Uh, no but for a good forty-five seconds of a conversation. I think people do that. The phone rings, wakes them up, and you don't want to admit that you were taking a nap. That's the last thing in the world you want to do. So, once, my answering machine picked up, just as I picked up, so I had a record of this thing and I kept it for about two years. It was hilarious because, I was fast asleep, middle of the day, someone calls me up, I picked up the phone. And the person went, "Oh, I'm sorry Conan were you sleeping?" and I went, (in a groggy slurred voice) "Nooo." They went, "No, no if you were sleeping, I don't want..." (makes incoherent slurred words). And I had this tape. I called the Incredible Hulk today and talked to him. Now what is this, "Vanilla Fog" is the movie you're shooting right now in New York City.
SMG: Actually I shot two movies in New York this summer. The first one was "Cruel Inventions." Which was a modernized "Dangerous Liaisons" with Ryan Phillippe. And, now I'm shooting a movie called "Vanilla Fog" which is a romantic comedy with Sean Patrick Flannery.
CONAN: Amazing. I mean in addition to the show, you're making a lot of movies on the side. Just a show is enough for most people. But you're doing great.
SMG: You know, that's the great thing about the business these days. You can do television, you can do movies and it's great.
CONAN: I wouldn't know what that's like.
SMG: You work all the time.
CONAN: I'm sure the offers would be rolling in. (fake cries) And "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is Tuesday's at eight on the WB. But I don't think we have to tell our audience that. Thank you so much.
SMG: Thank you for having me.