Michelle Trachtenberg has been well trained in the art of secrecy. As Dawn, she’s one of the biggest secrets in the history of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Angel’s tragic curse, the Mayor’s sinister plot, the Initiative—none of them compare to learning at the end of the season five premiere that—surprise!—Buffy has a younger sister.

Only she’s not just a sister. She’s a Key. She’s living energy. And Glorificus wants her. Michelle, what’s going on here? What is the Key? What does it do?

“You do find out what the Key is.” Trachtenberg says, dodging the question. Clever move. Clearly, she’s learned much from Joss Whedon. But where is Glory going? Why does she need the Key?

“We don’t know that yet either, and that’s the truth.” Trachtenberg retorts. “Glory’s got some tricks up her sleeve that even we don’t know about yet. Of course, with Joss, anything can happen.”

That’s the best you’re going to get from Trachtenberg. Even our most wily interviewing trickery wasn’t enough to make Trachtenberg sing like a canary about the answer to the burning question that is Dawn Summers. But at least she knows how we feel. A die-hard Buffy fan herself from the show’s premiere, she’s weathered the storms of mystery within Whedon’s Buffyverse just as we all have. Now she’s lucky enough to find herself smack in the middle of one, and not even her best friends are privy to any info she might possess.

“When I signed on to play Dawn, they kept asking, ‘What’s your character about? Who’s she? What’s going on? What’s happening next week?’” Trachtenberg says. “But they got sick of it when I would always be tight-lipped.”

Other than the fact that she portrays a living being of energy, Trachtenberg is just your average teenage girl—talented, articulate, and eager to learn, yet also a big fan of the mall, Harry Potter, and Enrique Iglesias. She’s already an acting veteran who’s been in the business since age three, with credits ranging from a starring role in the movie Harriet the Spy to the big-budget summer flick Inspector Gadget. And though it may seem like her lops were sewn together for our interview to prevent any unexpected surprises from slipping out, she actually had plenty to say about her character and her evolving career.

BUFFY THE MAGAZINE: How did you get the part? Were you approached by Buffy or did you just go in to audition?

Michelle Trachtenberg: I went in to audition. I heard about it through my agent. I had been a huge fan of Buffy since day one. I’d worked with Sarah [Michelle Gellar] before, so that added to my love of Buffy. Before I even knew about Dawn, she’d invited me to come visit the set. It was just amazing. You walk on the set and you get to see how everything works—“Oh I understand. It doesn’t really glow. You have a button underneath.” I auditioned, and then I got to meet with Joss, and I guess they loved what I did, because I’m talking to you now.

BTM: What was it like being such a huge fan of the show and then becoming part of it?

MT: It was incredible. When I got my first script, I was like, “I know what’s gonna happen before you do.” I could walk on the soundstage and be like, “My character has her own bedroom.” It was very surreal.

BTM: I can imagine. And it must be exciting to be a part of such a huge mystery on the show. Something that really gets the fans talking.

MT: I know! I love it. Whenever a new character comes on to a show, you always have a meeting before the season, just to talk about who your character is and what she’s about. This meeting didn’t have a whole lot of that. They were like, “Well, she’s a key. She’s energy. Bad people are after her. Right now, we don’t know very much about her, but have fun.”

BTM: So you’re a key. You’re Buffy’s sister. You’ve been created from energy. That’s all you know. How do you approach building a character out of that?

MT: The main thing they said was that Dawn was all of these things, but she’s human. Certain people brought me into human form, but the main idea I based my character around was that Dawn doesn’t know this. Dawn assumes that for the fourteen years of her life, she’s been Buffy’s sister. I can relate to that; I’ve been a sister all my life. She’s really just a normal teenager, except that Dawn is a bit more outgoing, a bit more talkative. She’s got more guts. But she has her crushes, she has her diaries. She doesn’t know what’s going on inside her.

BTM: What’s it like playing Sarah Michelle Gellar’s sister? You mentioned that you’ve been good friends with her for a while.

MT: I love Sarah. We worked together on All My Children. I have a big sister myself, but she was always my big sister on set, and she’s always been incredibly professional, smart, and talented. Nothing has changed. She’s only perfected what she already possessed. I think she’s just a beautiful person.

NTM: Would you say that your own sister picks on you as much as, or more than Buffy picks on Dawn?

MT: I think every sibling relationship has to have a couple of, “She borrowed my pant, and she spilled stuff on them, and what am I supposed to do, because you can’t clean it off?” My sister borrows my clothes all the time, I borrow her clothes all the time. We have our fair share of bickering, but it’s all healthy. Unless you ask my mom, and she’s just locked in her bedroom, like, “No. Go away.”

BTM: With all this Buffy craziness going on, and being on such a high-profile show, do you find it’s still easy to be a normal teenager?

MT: My mom is the person who takes care of that. She’s always been adamant about me staying grounded. Education is my first priority, and I love to learn. I love to get every bit of information I possibly can about a certain subject. We’ve made sure that whenever I go on location, I have at least a week on every production to just go around and see wherever we are. She’s my role model and such a strong person. I only wish I could have one percent of that strength. She’s a really wonderful woman. I am a normal teenager who has to clean her room and do other chores. I hang out with my friends and do stuff on the weekends.

BTM: You spend many of your days on the Buffy set. How do you also work in going to school?

MT: I have a teacher on set who teaches all of my subjects. My school sends her all the work that my classmates are doing, and I do the exact same amount of work. I do all the tests, the homework, the whole thing. Plus, I have to learn my lines, so it’s a full day’s work. But that’s the life I’m sued to. I’ve been doing this since I was three years old, and I don’t ever plan to stop. It gets difficult at times, because I have to have at least three hours of school a day. Being a sophomore in high school, those three hours of school a day are very minimal compared to all the work I have to do. For some reason, the teachers believe that sophomore year is the year to batter the students. It’s difficult, but I’m always the one for hard work. I never take the easy way out. As my teacher so often informs me, “Don’t write the five-paragraph essay. Four will be sufficient.”

BTM: Do you think it’s easier to do it this way than it would be to go to school every day?

MT: The easier part of it is that it’s on a one-on-one basis. There are so many kids out there sitting in big classrooms with thirty kids, let’s say doing math, who don’t get the problem when half the class does. Eight out of ten kids would just be like, “Okay, whatever. I’ll figure it out on my own,” instead of raising their hands and asking the teacher. I can do that. There are no other kids. But the hard part is going back and forth, especially if it’s a really tough scene. In an episode coming up, there was a whole lot of emotional stuff for my character. Being very upset and then going back to school, and moving back and forth, was a bit difficult. Surprisingly I never lost my concentration, and that’s because I had support around me.

BTM: It seems like you’re really into the acting thing for the long haul. Is thin something you’d like to do with your life?

MT: It’s something I definitely love to do. I love being in front of the cameras. Acting is my passion. I wanted to start that slow rise from childhood roles to more adult roles, and Buffy was my favorite show. I could be Little Miss Buffy Encyclopedia. I was in Joss’ office the other day, and he has the Buffy trading cards. Just for fun, I started rifling through them, and I could name each and every episode. Buffy is such an incredible show, and I give a lot of credit to the writers. They have to keep the same basic characters, and every week is like a new movie.

BTM: What were some of your favorite episodes before you joined the show?

MT: Oh, “Hush.” First of all, how creative was that, to do a show that was almost completely silent? It was still so incredibly effective. And those scare Gentlemen people just frightened me. There were still able to stick in the funny parts, like when they buy the wipe boards and write, “Hi Giles!” See? I know my Buffy.

BTM: You do. You’re the Key to Buffy. Is it easy for you to get as involved in the show’s story now that you know how everything works?

MT: Definitely. We get the tape of every show the day before, and we all sit down and watch, just to see how it’s pieced together. It’s still very exciting. The monsters aren’t as scary, but they still have an effect. There’s nothing like walking on the set in the middle of the night, and you see this freaky demonoid weirdo thing walking by like, “Did you have a nice lunch?”

BTM: Is there a lot of Dawn in you, or you in Dawn? Or does she have a different approach to life than you do?

MT: I think every character I’ve played has to have a little bit of me in them. There’s no way of getting around that. All of my characters have been very different, but they all have some qualities that are the same. I think Dawn and I are definitely alike, although not in the way that she’s the Key—

BTM: You mean, you’re not the Key? No way!

MT: I’ve tried telling my friends, “I’m the key to mankind’s survival!” They’re like, “No, honey. That doesn’t work for you.”

BTM: There should be some fringe benefits. At the very least, you should be able to get out of some homework.

MT: I tried that too. Then I tried it with my sister, and that didn’t work.

BTM: You should be able to shout, “Let me borrow these pants! I’m the key to mankind’s survival!”

MT: “If you want to live you’ll have to give me your new shirt!” She didn’t fall for that. But Dawn and I are a lot alike. I’m a very outgoing person. Some people even say I’m talkative, but I don’t know where they get that from. We’re both normal.

BTM: Except that she’s built from energy, and you’re flesh and blood.

MT: Oh, fine. Rub it in!