LOS ANGELES – Sarah Michelle Gellar was jet-lagged from her commute.

She had just flown back to Los Angeles from a few days filming the forthcoming Teen Wolf (2011 to 2017) spin-off series in Atlanta.

Her decision to join Wolf Pack, as both a star and executive producer, partly depended on the freedom to stay based in LA with her family and commute to the set, packing only a carry-on for each East Coast stint. She is married to actor Freddie Prinze Jr, 46, and they have two children aged 13 and 10.

After an extended hiatus from acting, the American actress, now 45, is in the budding phase of what she considers her “adult career”. And this time around, Gellar is working on her own terms.

“I think I’ve earned it in a very honest way,” she said in a recent video call. “I come with 40 years of experience. Some good, some bad, some in between.”

First up: a small role in the high school dark comedy film Do Revenge, which is now showing on Netflix and directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. In it, a dethroned queen bee (Camila Mendes) at a posh private high school strikes a secret deal with an unassuming new student (Maya Hawke) to exact revenge on each other’s enemies.

More than 20 years after Gellar played the crucifix-carrying, cocaine-snorting Kathryn Merteuil in Cruel Intentions (1999) – based on the Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil in the 1782 novel Les Liaisons dangereuses – she is once again surrounded by scheming teens on screen. Only now, she is their advice-giving headmaster.

“I wouldn’t want to be 17 again for anything,” she said. “Thirty-two maybe, but not 17.”

Gellar began acting as a child in the 1980s before eventually becoming one of the biggest names in Y2K-era young Hollywood, thanks to roles in cult classics like Cruel Intentions and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), and the television series Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997 to 2003).

How did your role in Do Revenge come about?

I’ve taken quite a few years off, and I was just getting into the mindset of, okay, I think I’m ready to go back to work, but I wasn’t 100 per cent there yet. They sent me the script and I said, it’s not really for me. I mean, if I was in my 20s, I would be clawing to star in that. But let me meet Jenn. Within the first 10 minutes, I realised, “Oh, she’s my new best friend.” I said, “I want to come in and chew some scenery and go home. I just want to dip my toes in the water.”

When they sent you the script, was it to play the headmaster?

There was no role. Jenn is a big Cruel Intentions fan and just said, “Do you think we can write something?” And we sort of came up with the character together.

In Robinson’s mind, the headmaster is your Cruel Intentions character grown up. Was that how you played it?

Absolutely. I always say, I wonder what Kathryn’s doing now? Who does that person become? But we really wanted her to be a champion of women too. She is building women up for what you have to face as a female.

You’ve been in this business a long time. Did you have generally good experiences as a teen and young woman in the industry?

No. It was really hard. There weren’t great female roles when I came up. It was the girlfriend role, the wife role. That’s why Buffy was so spectacular because she really had something to do, and then we had I Know What You Did Last Summer, where it was the women figuring things out. That was all a new turn of events.

That was on the script side of it. And then there’s the other side of being a young girl in the business. Growing up in New York, I had a little bit of street sense going into it, which is helpful. But no, it was not easy. And I’ve had my fair share of experiences, (but) I don’t win by telling my stories, emotionally, for me. I look at people that tell their stories, and I’m so impressed. But in this world where people get torn apart, and victim blaming and shaming, I just keep my stories in here.

So, is this the beginning of a full-blown SMG renaissance?

I think so. You sometimes have to step away to miss something.

I’d been working my whole life. I did (the sitcom) The Crazy Ones (2013 to 2014) when my son was weeks old. I thought, I can do this for the next five years and be a mum. And when (co-star) Robin (Williams) passed away, I just had to re-evaluate everything. I saw what it did to him. And I needed that chance to be a parent and be present. That time away just made me appreciate what I get to do now. NYTIMES