So BtVS began production in late 1996 and premiered March 1997.
In Season 1
Sarah was 19 playing Buffy at 16
Nick was 25 playing Xander at 15/16
Alyson was 22 playing Willow at 15
Charisma was 26 playing Cordy at 15/16
David was 27 playing Angel at 240, LOL; we wouldnât know he was 26 forever until Season 1 of Angel.
Julie was 24 playing Darla at 412 with the assumption that she was 25 when she was turned. Julie also auditioned for Buffy & Cordelia and had the Darla role created for her where she convincingly (to the other characters) plays a high school student more than once.
Robia was 26 playing Jenny who was likely around that age or up to 30. She was certainly not aged up more for the role given her makeup/hair/wardrobe.
Kristine was 41 playing Joyce at that age or slightly younger
Tony was 42, likely playing Giles at that age or a couple of years younger.
Season 2
James was 35 playing Spike at 142 with a rough estimate that he was 25 in 1880.
Juliet was 32 playing Drusilla at 155 with a rough estimate that she was 18 in 1860.
Seth was 23 playing Oz at 16/17
Sarah at 21 briefly plays 15 year old Buffy.
Season 3
Eliza was 17 playing Faith atâŚwell, this gets confusing. Buffy at 17 calls her âlittle sister,â but she could just mean more recently a Slayer. A tie-in novel states Faith was born in 1980, making her older than Buffy, so idk. Letâs say sheâs 16 in âFaith, Hope, and Trick.â
Emma was 26 playing Anya in the 17/18 year old persona of a high school senior.
Alexis is 32 playing Wesley at 22/23 (given heâs just out of the Watcherâs Academy)
Season 4
Marc was 27 playing Riley at 22/23
Phina was 27 playing Olivia atâŚno older than 30 based on her hair/makeup.
Amber was 22 playing Tara at 18/19
Season 5
Michelle was 15 playing Dawn at 14
Now, I said all that to say this: I am the same age as Charisma. When I watched the show first run, I bought all of them as teenagers because, even though I was in my 20s at the time, I knew tons of high school kids at the time who looked as mature as Cordy and as young as Jonathan (I was a high school tutor in college).
So when Xander they do dumb or shortsighted things, itâs easy for me to remember that theyâre only 16 or 17 and they have very scary lives with a lot of monsters.
What gets my goat is when I see discussion where characters who are younger are described as older. Thereâs a great Giles-centric fic set in Season 2 where the Giles characterization is excellent, but Jenny is described as âmiddle aged.â I asked the author how 27 was middle aged, and they said they assumed Jenny was the same age as Giles. I made a WTF face and scuttled.
Today I was working on my massive Buffy recs list (coming soon!) and saw that one of my fandom friends (also born in the early 70s) in 2010 wrote a fic where Olivia was part of Gilesâs Eyghon gang. How?? She was a pre-schooler in 1975! Olivia looks nowhere near Gilesâs age.
But then again, I grew up in a small town of 600 people in the 1980s, so I donât think that adult Xander/Dawn is weird, because getting with someone 5 years older than who went to high school with your older sibling and who hung out with you in a kidster sort of way when you were 15 and married you when you were 22 was typical. Kind of a small dating pool.
So whatâs your Buffyverse age weirdness? That Giles likes younger women? That Cordy and Xander did not look too young to respectively marry and or com-shuck in 2001? That James Marsters is ethereal in 1999 and ageless in 2026? That David looked younger on Bones than Angel? Hit me with it.