Michelle Trachtenberg Cause Of Death To Remain Undetermined After Family Declines Autopsy
Trachtenberg's famly requested that no autopsy be conducted because of religious reasons. The medical examiner's office would automatically do an autopsy if foul play or criminality was suspected, but there is none, so the office did not overrule the family's decision.
More from Deadline
Michelle Trachtenberg Dies: 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer,' 'EuroTrip' & 'Gossip Girl' Actor Was 39
'Buffy,' 'Gossip Girl' & 'Harriet The Spy' Co-Stars Mourn Michelle Trachtenberg's Death: Ed Westwick, Chace Crawford, Kim Cattrall & More Pay Tribute
Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks, Francis Ford Coppola, 'Superman' Costar Valerie Perrine And More Pay Tribute To Gene Hackman
Police responded to a 911 call shortly after 8 a.m. Wednesday at a luxury residential tower in midtown Manhattan where Trachtenberg was found unresponsive. Paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene. She was 39.
The former Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Gossip Girl star had recently undergone a liver transplant and may have suffered complications, police sources told ABC News.
A spokesperson for the family issued a statement Wednesday confirming her death. 'It is with great sadness to confirm that Michelle Trachtenberg has passed away. The family requests privacy for their loss. There are no further details at this time,' the statement read.
RELATED:
Trachtenberg was a lifelong actor who made her television debut in commercials at age 3 before landing a recurring role as Lily Montgomery on the long-running soap opera All My Children. She gained further recognition while starring in Nickelodeon's The Adventures of Pete & Pete and was nominated for a Daytime Emmy for her role in Discovery children's series Truth or Scare before landing her breakout feature lead as Harriet M. Welsch in the 1996 Paramount film Harriet the Spy, based on the classic children's novel.
Trachtenberg joined Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the cult WB fantasy series' fifth season in 2000 as Dawn Summers, the younger sister to Sarah Michelle Gellar's Buffy. She went on to appear in the 2004 cult comedy EuroTrip and Disney sports drama Ice Princess. In 2008, she joined the cast of Gossip Girl as Georgina Sparks, the manipulative and unpredictable troublemaker who frequently threw the lives of the Upper East Side elite into chaos. Around that same time, she also starred opposite Zac Efron and Matthew Perry in Warner Bros' comedy 17 Again.
RELATED:
Her most recent television work included guest appearances on series such as House, Weeds, NCIS: Los Angeles, and Sleepy Hollow. She also lent her voice to animated projects, including Robot Chicken, most recently reprising in Max's Gossip Girl sequel series in 2023.
Matt Grobar contributed to this report.
Best of Deadline
2025 Deaths Photo Gallery: Hollywood & Media Obituaries
2024 Hollywood & Media Deaths: Photo Gallery & Obituaries
Remembering Shelley Duvall: A Career In Photos
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
16 minutes ago
- Forbes
Meet The Entrepreneurs Behind Spike Lee's New ‘Highest 2 Lowest' Film
Come August 15 in theaters and streaming September 5 on Apple TV+, audiences will be able to witness the fifth and possibly final time that veteran Hollywood heavyweights Denzel Washington and Spike Lee reunite for a cinematic storytelling with Highest 2 Lowest, their latest drama from A24 and Apple Original Films. Based off of the 1959 book King's Ransom, which was then adapted into famed Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's 1963 film titled High and Low, Highest 2 Lowest follows longtime music producer mogul David King (Washington), whose world is turned upside down when his teenage son is kidnapped and a hefty payout is demanded for his release. Things get tricky when the kidnapping goes wrong, as loyalty between loved ones is ultimately put into question. Before Highest 2 Lowest officially got in the filmmaking hands of Lee and Washington, producer Jason Michael Berman and screenwriter Alan Fox helped orchestrate this project into motion. Sitting down with Fox and Berman, I wondered what the early process was like, in getting this film one step closer to the screen. Berman said, 'When we got the rights to the original Kurosawa film from the 1960s - we got the rights back in the summer of 2019 - it felt like it's something that could definitely happen. It was dealing with a shoe business and it was dealing with a specific period in Japan, that it felt like there could be a really fun, fresh, unique way to tell the exact same story, but to the 2020s. Alan had the really fresh take that I think Denzel Washington, who had always shown a lot of interest in this type of character for probably close to 20 years. Alan was able to look for a fresh take for a movie that had been in development since 1989, here in the states.' Fox added: 'It's been described by a lot of people as like a morality tale, right? What I think about is this idea of sacrifice never goes out of style. It's a timeless question of like - What do you do for the people you care about? How far are you willing to go for the people that you consider your closest friend or your brother? What would you actually do for those people in your life? What I tried to look at was like - What does capitalism look and/or feel like now in what we call maybe late-stage capitalism in America? To me, the entertainment business was a really fun way to look at that because there's the line in the movie - attention is the only currency left. A$AP Rocky's character idolizes [the character of]Being a story that has been on Washington's radar for years, these two creatives also recall how the two-time Oscar-winning actor's own team helped them lay the groundwork. Berman said, 'Well, it was Denzel Washington's agent who had called me in August of 2019 with the opportunity that he knew became available to get the rights, and when he called me, he said to me - I have a lottery ticket for you. He said - There's over 10+ million dollars against this movie in scripts that have been paid for by other studios over the last 20 years. We were always doing it by building it for Denzel. So, when I went to Alan and told him about the original movie and then he came up with the idea for this remake, or as Spike likes to call it, 'a reimagining,' which is why he changed it from High and Low to Highest 2 Lowest, Alan was writing it for Denzel. Then, we met with Spike, and Spike came in and made it a Spike Lee joint.' He added: 'One of the things that I think is so cool is that Alan as a filmmaker and me as a producer, for two of the most prolific artists of our time [Washington and Lee] reuniting after 20 years and know that we were the backbone of why that happened is also really exciting.' Fox said, 'The thing that I really took away from Denzel is whenever he had notes for me, he called me at like 3:34am in the morning, because he gets up so early to work. I think he would call thinking I'm going to leave a voicemail or whatever, but the funny thing is that's when I get up, too. So, it was the strangest experience the first time he called me, because it's like 3:45am in Los Angeles and I see my phone ring and I'm like - Who is calling me? And it's literally Denzel Washington telling me an idea he had overnight about the script. And so, that was really interesting to see that level of dedication from someone at the highest of highs. That's why he's the greatest actor of all time.' Even Washington and Lee have expressed their praise for their early collaborators. Washington shared exclusively here, 'Producer Jason Berman was an integral part of the success in getting Highest 2 Lowest made.' BlacKkKlansman Oscar-winning director, Lee, also shared, 'Jason Berman is a great asset of the producing team of Highest 2 Lowest. I know he will be successful setting up his own company and looking to the films.' As I wrapped my conversation with Fox and Berman, after their years working around Hollywood and helping bring Highest 2 Lowest to the world, I was curious of the advice they might have for other creative entrepreneurs out there, who perhaps have been turned down with their ideas, or have had to play the waiting game. What do they feel these understandably frustrated artists would benefit from hearing from them, following their own uphill climb towards success? Fox said, 'Try to take control of your own destiny the best you can. I think too often in life, and I know in Hollywood, but I think in a lot of things in life, we give away our power because we're so desperate to kind of be accepted by the level we think we want to try to achieve at. I think if I had any advice, it would be betting on yourself as much as you can. Write the script - you can't send anything to anyone until you write the script. If you can write a small film and make it yourself, make the movie. The further you can get down the road without needing permission from someone else early in the process, the better off you're going to be.' Berman, who is now the President of his own A/Vantage Pictures, concluded by saying, 'We work in such a subjective world and industry. I think it's all about conviction. We were the first phase of this reimagining - then Denzel and Spike came in and they made it their own, but I think we had conviction in seeing the potential of what this could be. And in terms of getting A24 to back Alan in being the one to write it, and also just having conviction and the potential of what I saw in the source material - it's so much about conviction, no matter what other people say.'
Gizmodo
44 minutes ago
- Gizmodo
‘Alien: Earth' Begins With Crucial Context and Constant Chaos
There's a moment in the second episode of Alien: Earth where everything changes in an instant. The show you think you are watching, about a crashed ship and some weird hybrids, becomes the show you've always wanted to see. One of the most iconic creatures in film history makes its debut on your TV screen, it's slow-motion, and it's glorious. From there, things only get more interesting, more disgusting, and more awesome. It's off to the races. The first two episodes of Noah Hawley's Alien: Earth premiered this week, and we're going to be here with you all season to break it down. The show's arrival is the culmination of years of curiosity and anxiety, especially for fans of the Alien franchise. Alien on Earth? How would that work? Would the show feel like an Alien movie? How can we care without Ripley? Well, in the show's first episode, Hawley erases all of that by giving you a ton of fascinating context and potential. Then, in the second episode, he blends those with the wild, horror-driven chaos Alien fans know and crave. By the end, we're left gasping for air, dying to see where it all goes next. Let's recap, shall we?From the first moments of 'Neverland,' the premiere episode of Alien: Earth, you know you're in good hands. The slow, methodical title reveal, directly inspired by the original films, shows both a reverence for the material as well as an ability to evolve with it. We meet the crew of USCSS Maginot, a deep-space research vessel owned by Weyland-Yutani, and in a very familiar scene of groggy space-travelers crowding around a dinner table, are hit with a ton of exposition about the world of the show. Paramount among these revelations is that five companies control the entire planet, with Weyland-Yutani only being one, and that this mission was about acquiring specimens. A mission that cost many, many lives. Then, to illustrate that, we enter another room in the ship, lovingly referred to as 'The Zoo,' and we see not just Facehuggers and eggs from the other movies, but all sorts of new, weird, creepy, crawly things. So the show basically starts as an Alien movie. People wake up on a ship, they talk, and there are creatures. This is comfortable. This is good. But the episode is called 'Neverland,' and we quickly pivot to something completely different, a remote research facility of another of those companies, Prodigy. It's run by a young trillionaire named Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), and we pick things up right as he's about to make history. He's about to transfer a human consciousness into a synthetic body, basically defeating death. That human is a young girl named Marcy, who we see to be kind, sweet, and empathetic. She's sick, though, and in her new body, sickness won't be a thing. She chooses a new name for herself, Wendy, as per Boy's obsession with Peter Pan. Wendy (Sydney Chandler) is still Marcy on the inside, but not the outside. On the outside, she's fast, strong, and potentially immortal. She discusses some of that with Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant), a fellow synthetic being, and Dame Sylvia (Essie Davis), one of the scientists responsible for the procedure. Wendy then learns more kids are coming to join her, and she's to act as their big sister, easing them into the obviously terrifying notion of leaving their mortal bodies. Here, Hawley is setting up a whole new world for us, ripe with philosophical implications. Are these beings human? What is their potential? What are their limits? And what are the larger implications of life if there is no more death? All questions for another moment because things need to get going. Hawley channels David Fincher's camerawork from Alien 3 to let us know that some terrible things have happened on the Maginot. People are dead, creatures are out, and the ship's security officer, a cyborg named Morrow (Babou Ceesay), relays this information to Weyland-Yutani. Even as he dooms one of his shipmates by not allowing her access to his secure cabin, the only priority for Morrow is getting the specimens to the company. That final shipmate subsequently gets torn apart by the now fully grown xenomorph, which then almost gets Morrow too before he hides in a special compartment. As the Maginot zooms towards Earth, we meet the show's other main character, Joe (Alex Lawther). Joe is Wendy's older brother, and she, through some mysterious power no one at Prodigy can figure out, has been accessing and manipulating cameras to spy on him. Whether or not that attachment to her brother is a good thing is up for debate among the powers that be. Joe is a medic working in the military of Prodigy, and after he tells his friends that a request for transfer has been denied, the Maginot crashes into the city. Joe and the team immediately jump into action, gearing up and heading to help survivors. Wendy sees this on her screens and has a wild idea. Prodigy should send her and her fellow multi-billion-dollar immortal children to the crash site to help. This moment seems wildly out of place and forced for many reasons, but the biggest one is they're kids. What do they know about military movements or rescue missions? And the other characters all tell Boy this over and over. Wendy only wants to go because her brother is in peril. Even so, the trillionaire agrees to her plan. He wants to see what his new toys can do. Back at the crash site, we watch multiple teams go deeper and deeper into the ship. We see how it has smashed through a skyscraper to create a deep hole of danger. Morrow escapes his hatch and reports back to Weyland-Yutani that he's going to try and secure the cargo despite the soldiers boarding the ship. Joe's group and a few others walk around too. Each finds signs that some very, very bad things happened, including one cryochamber where a guy has a hole in his chest. ('Uh-oh,' thinks every Alien fan.) Two others enter a lab that has lots of creatures still in containment, but not all of them. Two massive insect-looking creatures slip into their clothes, later emerging to suck the blood out of their bodies, killing them. As the episode comes to an end, Kirsh talks to Wendy about the differences between humanity and their kind. But Wendy doesn't want to hear any of it. She tells Kirsh that, no matter what she has to do, her brother will survive. She's cheated death; she now wants to do the same for him. Since FX gave us two episodes to start things off, instead of breaking things down after episode one, let's dive right into episode two and save the minutiae for after. Episode two of Alien: Earth is called 'Mr. October,' both a direct reference to the episode's inclusion of baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, and a broader scope term for a hero stepping up to the challenge when it's most needed. Both Wendy and Joe fit that bill in the episode, which makes sense, because the term was taught to them by their father, who we meet in several flashbacks and yes, is played by series creator Noah Hawley himself. Also, the beginning of 'Mr. October' establishes something very cool about the series. Instead of some kind of 'Previously on Alien: Earth' montage, the show replays those moments during the slow, methodical title reveal. It's a fun way to both suck us right back into the show and give us a few brief reminders of what to remember as the story moves forward. As Joe and his team dive deeper into the crash site, learning more and more about the horrors that befell the crew, Boy and Sylvia have a discussion back at Prodigy. He explains that he didn't create Wendy and the other hybrids to cheat death and sell immortality. That's certainly a benefit, but not the main reason. He's an unparalleled genius and simply wants to meet someone who blows his mind. Someone who is smarter than him. And, he hopes, by mixing a human being with a supercomputer, maybe he'll achieve that. Sylvia seems skeptical about the claim, but the conversation is ripe with foreshadowing, not just of why he let the kids go to the crash site, but of what Wendy and his new family might become. That's especially true in light of what we see later. A day before the crash, we learn that Wendy was spying on her brother remotely as always. He was at an office and asked a government robot for an early exit from his military job so he could go to college on Mars. But, fearing she'd lose him, Wendy manipulates the code of the robot from thousands of miles away, denying his claim. She even makes it retort with an inside joke she and he shared from an Ice Age movie, which confuses him amid the disappointment. The Prodigy scientists are blown away by this because they have no idea how she did it. The next day, when he's forced to deal with the crash, Wendy feels guilty about it. She kept her brother in his job and caused him to be in this dangerous situation. This informs not just her seemingly random request to go to the crash, but Boy Kavalier's even more surprising agreement with her. He saw her do something he's never seen before, and he wants to see what else she's capable of. Which brings us all the way back to 1,500 words ago and the first paragraph of this piece. The moment it all changes. Joe and his friends continue to search the crash when he senses something above him. Slowly, out of the dark, emerges the xenomorph, and it chases Joe across the giant pit at the center of the structure. It's here when, after all the thoughts of crashes, hybrid beings, and humanity, we were reminded this is an Alien show. And Alien is awesome. It's a sentiment that continues through the rest of the episode as the creature chases Joe up and down the building. At one point, it gleefully massacres a costume party. The next, it obliterates a group of soldiers. In both instances, the xenomorph leaves gallons of blood, guts, and exploded body parts everywhere. In a show that seemed so quiet and introspective at the start, it was wholly surprising and awesome to get some real, gross, Alien carnage. We absolutely loved it. When Wendy and the kids reach the crash site, she immediately starts hearing something. Something no one else hears. When she then abandons her team to go find her brother, it only intensifies. As Wendy and Slightly (Adarsh Gourav) go after Joe, Kirsh and the rest of the group dive deeper into the ship. They discover numerous other alien species, including an incredibly creepy eyeball octopus that jumps on your face, sucks out your eye, and then takes over your body. Or, at least that's what it appeared to do to the cat it had infected and what it tried to do to Nibs (Lily Newmark), another of Wendy's siblings. After a second encounter with the xenomorph, including a very cinematic slow-motion jump over a gaudy chandelier, Joe is about to die. But, he's saved by Morrow, who has finally caught up to one of the specimens he and his crew found in space, and he is supposed to reacquire for the company. We even get a glimpse of how he and those soldiers were probably able to neutralize these creatures, by using electricity to freeze them and then a weird, organic net gun to trap them. The net doesn't hold, of course, as the xeno escapes and kills a bunch of other soldiers, but Joe survives and Wendy finally finds him. Kirsh wants Wendy and Slightly to head to the front of the ship, where they've discovered there are a bunch of eggs in storage ('Uh-oh,' thinks every Alien fan), so Wendy convinces Joe to go with them. On the way, Slightly lets it slip that she is his sister, which Joe doesn't understand. He buried his sister. But, we learn, her dad agreed to donate her to Prodigy to save her life. It just had to be kept a secret. Joe is scared and skeptical, but after asking a few hyper-specific questions only his little sister would know, he gives in. We've only been with these characters for two episodes, but it was still an incredibly touching, heartfelt moment. A moment that's very quickly taken from them when the xeno returns and seemingly smashes Joe down into the building. Wendy decides she'll go after him and that's the episode. The first two episodes of Alien: Earth are incredibly dense but also very entertaining. Each is filled with interesting ideas and possibilities, plus lots of gross, creature horror. We also begin to see how this is all going to weave together. Corporations fighting over these creatures. Wendy and the hybrids exploring themselves and these other creatures. Creatures that, like themselves, are not of this world. Plus, a brother and sister reunite under impossible circumstances. Sign us the heck up for six more weeks of Alien: Earth. Here's where we're going to mention a few things that didn't quite fit into the flow of the story above but were worth noting. What did you think of the premiere of Alien: Earth? Let us know below. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
A Lost ‘Weapons' Chapter May Spawn An Entire Prequel
Weapons does not seem like a movie that warrants a sequel, a bit of a throwback to the one-off Get Out, which garnered similar praise. But it may not be the last we see of this universe all the same. While there were at least some rumblings of a Weapons 2 initially, the idea may have now shifted to Weapons: Origins, or whatever they might call a prequel. The idea here is that it would focus on the show-stealing Aunt Gladys, played by Amy Madigan, who some are already saying may get an Oscar nomination for that part. This would be a film showing her origin story. That origin is at least somewhat hinted at in the movie, at least by the fact that it would be set a very, very long time ago. The singular clue here is that she refers to the comatose parents as having 'consumption,' a very old word for what would eventually become tuberculosis, as the principal notes. How old is 'consumption?' Well, that may provide a clue as to how old the quasi-vampiric Gladys is. It first appeared in writing in the 14th century and then was used medically in the 15th century where then, for four more centuries, was referred to as a 'wasting disease,' again, what would be the extremely deadly pulmonary tuberculosis that killed millions before treatment and prevention was established. So that Gladys is probably at least close to 150 years old, based on when that term stopped being used, though of course she could be even older. As it turns out, we almost learned a lot her origin in the movie itself. Via THR: So, there was at least some plan in motion for her origin already, but this is still just a concept. No deals for the movie, no timeline for when it may came out. And importantly, it's an open question whether this could be a 'young Gladys' prequel where she would not be played by Madigan, though I have to imagine that she would either fully star or at least appear, given that the interest in the character is almost solely through her performance. It seems unlikely that director Zach Cregger may have time for this any time soon. He's already working on his next film, Resident Evil, which we've just learned stars Weapons MVP Austin Abrams, the former Euphoria star who played the drug addict James. It's not a direct adaptation of the games, but a new story set within them. Needless to say after Barbarian and Weapons, the Resident Evil fanbase is eager to see how this goes. As for the prequel? I'm not sure how likely it will be in the end as Cregger may simply want to move on, but we'll look for updates on that front. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.
