The Hidden Story of Michelle Trachtenberg

Michelle Trachtenberg is certainly no stranger to film and television audiences. A child actor who starred in her first film when she was just 10, Trachtenberg’s IMDb profile demonstrates the breadth of her versatility as an actor. Kid-friendly shenanigans? Check out her performance in 1996’s “Harriet the Spy.” Raunchy teen comedy? “EuroTrip” certainly checks that box. Binge-worthy, soapy TV drama? Her recurring role as savage socialite Georgina Sparks was a welcome addition to “Gossip Girl.”

Of course, Trachtenberg remains best known for portraying Dawn Summers, the little sister of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s character in the beloved supernatural series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” a role she played throughout her teen years. And while fans may most associate her with Dawn, it was actually her “Gossip Girl” character that she’s declared to be her own personal favorite. “Georgina is actually my favorite character that I’ve played because she’s such an evil B****,” she told ET of her villainous character. “That was fun.”

Since then, she’s branched out even further, playing the Russian-born wife of presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and hosting her own true crime series, “Meet, Marry, Murder,” which also placed her behind the camera as executive producer. And sure, she’s been a fixture on TV and movie screens for decades, but how much do her fans really know about this talented actor and her evolution from child stardom to a successful Hollywood career as an adult? Here’s a closer look at the journey and untold truth of Michelle Trachtenberg.

Michelle Trachtenberg didn’t waste any time getting her acting career off the ground. In a 1996 interview with the Orange County Register, she recounted how she kicked open the door to Hollywood when she was still a toddler. “I saw a friend of mine in a commercial,” she recalled, “and walked over to my mom and said, ‘Mommy, I want to be on TV.'” That was precisely what happened; her mother began taking the youngster to auditions for TV commercials, and before long, she was cast in her first. Appearing alongside “Harriet the Spy” co-star Rosie O’Donnell, Trachtenberg revealed that her very first professional acting gig was in a commercial for Wisk laundry detergent. “I think I was like three or four,” she mused.

Trachtenberg was apparently in high demand when it came to TV commercials, appearing in well over 100, for brands ranging from Panasonic to Fuji, to Kraft. All that experience in front of a camera at such a young age clearly paid off; at age 10, she landed her first starring role in a movie when she was cast in the title role in Nickelodeon’s “Harriet the Spy,” winning the role over hundreds of other child actors. “We looked at 350 girls,” Nickelodeon Movies president Debby Beece told the Register, “But there was no question in our minds that Michelle was the right girl for the job.”

Michelle Trachtenberg isn’t just an actor who’s appeared on hit TV series, she’s also a viewer who’s become a fan of some of those shows. That was certainly the case with “House,” the Fox medical mystery series in which British actor Hugh Laurie played the titular Dr. House, whose genius at zeroing in on difficult-to-determine diagnoses was as powerful as his grumpy, rude demeanor.

When Trachtenberg guest-starred in the show’s second season as a teenage girl who’d recently undergone heart transplant surgery but then mysteriously experienced anaphylactic shock, it was far from a random occurrence. “My favorite show hands-down is ‘House’ … I’m obsessed with the show,” Trachtenberg revealed during an appearance on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.”

As she explained, one of the show’s executive producers was a friend. “So, I’m begging him for ages, ‘Please, please let me do a guest spot, and my one thing is I really need a love scene with Hugh Laurie.'” Admitting she was disappointed when that didn’t happen, Trachtenberg could content herself with at least being his patient, if not his love interest. She did, however, have a somewhat intimate scene with Laurie due to her character’s ailment. “I had a tick up my special area,” she said, leading to a hilariously awkward moment when Dr. House inspected between her legs — only to discover a small piece of paper, upon which she’d written, “Hi, I heart you.”

Michelle Trachtenberg’s mother immigrated to the U.S. from Russia and was living in New York City when her daughter was born. Growing up in Brooklyn, Russian was spoken in the household. Interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, Trachtenberg confirmed that she’d picked up some conversational Russian but hardly considered herself to be an expert. “She’s fluent, of course, and has helped make me fluent, though not on the level that she or other Americans who came from Russia are,” Trachtenberg said of her mom. “I speak what I call grammatically incorrect Russian. It’s really difficult to conjugate things and remember there’s a feminine and masculine.”

Her familiarity with the Russian language proved to be a benefit when she was cast as Marina Oswald, the Russian-born wife of Lee Harvey Oswald, in the 2013 TV miniseries “Killing Kennedy” (based on the book by ex-Fox News host Bill O’Reilly). As Trachtenberg told Fox News, much of her dialogue was in Russian, and she leaned on her mother to help her master it. “My mom actually was my translator and broke down the entire script for me,” she explained.

Despite her familiarity with the language, Trachtenberg found that particular aspect of the role to be daunting. “Russian is my second language so I would have to remember a line in English, then translate into Russian in my head,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “It was incredibly challenging.”

While Michelle Trachtenberg enjoyed much success as a child actor, that tended to result in jealousy with classmates while she attended school, where she was relentlessly bullied. “Everyone knew who I was, and a lot of people resented that, so I actually had quite a difficult school experience,” she told New York magazine’s Intelligencer. Speaking with Complex, Trachtenberg elaborated, citing one particularly fraught incident from her childhood when that bullying turned violently physical. “When I was in elementary school, this one girl threw me down a flight of stairs, fractured my ribs, punched and fractured my nose, and told the principal I used the word ‘b****’ and got me sent to detention — the only time I’ve ever been thrown in detention in my life,” she said.

She recalled some of the abuse she experienced at the hands of other kids in a 2020 Instagram post. “The kids were cruel,” she wrote in her candid social media missive. “There is no need to harp on the past. But I still have scars from being thrown down stairs and slammed into lockers head first.”

Numerous years later, Trachtenberg did not hold fond memories of her classmates at school. “They were terrible, and torturous, and evil,” she declared in an interview with “Talk Stoop.”

Everyone has those odd food phobias, disliking certain items for their texture, smell, taste, or other attributes. There’s no shortage of people, for example, who the very idea of consuming escargot is stomach-churning — try to imagine the mindset of whoever first saw a slimy snail creeping across the ground and went, “Hmm, now THAT looks delicious!”

Michelle Trachtenberg is not immune to this phenomenon, but her food phobia is one that many consider a favorite. “I really hate peanut butter,” she said in an interview with Newsweek. “Don’t like it at all. Don’t like the smell of it,” she added.

Her distaste for the distinctive scent of peanut butter, in fact, also holds true when it comes to those who get close to her after having just eaten some. “If we’re dating, and you’re eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you’re gonna have to brush your teeth, or hold the gum in your pocket,” she added, warning potential suitors of the perils of chowing down on a PB&J in her presence.

Peanut butter isn’t the only thing that Michelle Trachtenberg has been averse to over the course of her life. Another is the prospect of venturing into the great outdoors. While there are certainly many who find the idea of pitching a tent, starting a fire, and sleeping under the stars to be downright heavenly, Trachtenberg is decidedly not among them. “I’ve never been camping,” she revealed when she spoke with Newsweek.

During that video interview, she did not mince words about the extent of her dislike for camping; in fact, she left little doubt as to the odds that she’d ever embark on a camping trip. “I don’t like camping,” she declared. “I don’t ever want to go camping.”

There are two primary factors underlying her disdain for camping: the lack of electricity and the presence of bugs and critters. “I don’t think I can go camping without an electrical outlet nearby, and a floor that things can’t crawl into,” she insisted, while also admitting, “I’m not very outdoorsy at all, if you can’t tell.”

There’s never been a question that fans of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” loved to see Michelle Trachtenberg as Dawn Summers. For the actor herself, however, the experience of being part of the beloved supernatural series was apparently far more fraught than anyone realized at the time.

That came to light after “Buffy” star Charisma Carpenter issued a scorched-earth tweet accusing series creator Joss Whedon of ongoing abusive behavior toward her. Star Sarah Michelle Gellar took to Instagram to share her support of Carpenter, writing, “While I am proud to have my name associated with Buffy Summers, I don’t want to be forever associated with the name Joss Whedon.”