While Hollywood has had plenty of premature deaths before, including those representing the millennial generation (e.g., well, Aaron Carter), something feels different about the sudden and extremely unexpected death of Michelle Trachtenberg. Mainly because she played a much bigger part in carving out the millennial identity than those few others who have gone before her. In some ways, it would almost be like if Hilary Duff or Lindsay Lohan died out of nowhere (though, for a time there in the mid-00s and early 10s, Lohan’s death was often expected). And this is because, first and foremost, Trachtenberg came out of the gate of her acting career as Harriet M. Welsch in Harriet the Spy. In other words, she was a child star that fellow children of her age grew up on (which was also in keeping with the reason why Duff and Lohan are as indelible to a certain generation).
Released in the summer of 1996, Harriet the Spy served as the first feature in the Nickelodeon Movies arsenal. Yet another reason that Trachtenberg would become so synonymous with millennial youth. Because, long before the ick factor of Nickelodeon was exposed via Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, it was the network that many a millennial grew up on. So of course said demographic would be interested in seeing any movie that the network had its imprint on.
Indeed, even before its film imprint was established, Nickelodeon was where Trachtenberg really got her start (because that Law & Order episode she first appeared on in 1991 didn’t actually credit her). Specifically, as a character named Elsie Soaperstein on an episode of Clarissa Explains It All titled “Babysitting.” In it, Trachtenberg plays what amounts to a child version of Gossip Girl’s Georgina Sparks: bratty, insufferable and constantly seeking to cause mayhem and mischief. It was a big role for a seven-ish-year-old to take on, and one that clearly launched her into favor with the Nickelodeon cabal. For it wasn’t long after, in 1994, that she became a series regular on The Adventures of Pete & Pete as Nona F. Mecklenberg (obviously, screenwriters enjoyed giving her Jewish last names in keeping with her heritage). In fact, series co-creator Will McRobb loved her so much for the show that it was heartbreaking to be told she was going to have to leave it because Nickelodeon wanted her to play Harriet in this upcoming movie adaptation, and that meant Pete & Pete was out (scheduling conflicts, child labor laws, etc.).
As McRobb told The A.V. Club in 2012, “…she was offered the part of Harriet the Spy in a Nickelodeon movie, which pissed us off to no end, because—make no mistake—we found Michelle. We auditioned her, she had never done anything before, maybe some commercials, and we got her on the air and everyone loved her. Then fucking Nickelodeon comes in, ‘We have this Harriet the Spy movie, we want Michelle.’ What parent wouldn’t want their kid to leave a show to go do it? I remember feeling really burned by that at the time, because they were basically taking her away from the show, and she was such an integral part of the show at that point—she just helped us get so much of a different dynamic out of Little Pete. Wayne the Pain, and certainly Monica, to a certain extent, helped us in the third season, but it was never quite the same after she left.”
It was clear from the start, then, that Trachtenberg was a “hot commodity.” As Harriet the Spy director Bronwen Hughes described in her own post-mortem assessment of the actress, “Michelle was like a lightning bolt of a casting discovery. She had fire, she had spark, she had truth and she had Harriet’s conviction, like her sense of self. No one else came in the room like that. So she had that acting gene that you can’t really teach. It’s innate, which is not something you find very often… She had the ‘it’ factor, for sure.” Enough for her movie career to ascend in the early and mid-00s (this includes the divergent additions to her resume that are Can’t Be Heaven, EuroTrip, Mysterious Skin and Ice Princess).
Then, of course, came her Buffy stint from 2000 to 2003 (another extremely formative period of time for millennials). Though that role wasn’t without its drawbacks (see: later reports that Trachtenberg couldn’t be in the same room with Joss Whedon, something that became a rule on set after an “unnamed incident”). To be sure, Trachtenberg, like many young women acting during this period, suffered plenty of abuse in the name of delivering millennials their mind-forming media. And, in all frankness, there’s no doubt that, in many ways, Trachtenberg’s untimely death is the first big reconciliation that millennials have been faced with in terms of their own mortality. Not just because Trachtenberg didn’t even make it to forty and to think of her as being dead rather than as a perennial child is, in essence, for a millennial be forced to imagine themselves dead, too. Worse still, to be reminded that their youth itself is dead, and Trachtenberg’s demise is just one more unwanted harbinger of that.
And then there are all “the feels” that come up in recalling her body of work, how most of it was released at a time that was so much more innocent and carefree for the millennial (pre-9/11, pre-2008 financial crisis, etc.). Because, yes, Trachtenberg was a fixture over the years to any vaguely pop culture-oriented millennial’s life, in projects far beyond Harriet the Spy. This included, as mentioned, her role as Dawn Summers on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Georgina Sparks on Gossip Girl (which she reprised for two episodes of the short-lived reboot). As for the latter show, Trachtenberg’s abrupt passing was jarring enough for none other than frequently self-described “millennial girl” Blake Lively (a.k.a. Serena Van Der Woodsen herself) to break her erstwhile social media blackout during this difficult Baldoni time.
Posting a picture of the first day the two met on set (in her Instagram story, mind you, not on the grid), Lively wrote beneath it, “She was electricity. You knew when she entered a room because the vibration changed. Everything she did, she did 200%. She laughed the fullest at someone’s joke, she faced authority head-on when she felt something was wrong, she cared deeply about her work, she was proud to be a part of this community and industry… The world lost a deeply sensitive and good person in Michelle. May her work and her huge heart be remembered by those who were lucky enough to experience her fire.”
This extends to those millennials who were with her from the beginning of her often “odd” and unpredictable career. Which definitely includes the decision to star in another undeniable Trachtenberg “hit,” 2005’s Ice Princess. While, sure, Trachtenberg had already dabbled in Disney fare in the past (namely, 1999’s Inspector Gadget), most girls her age would have tried to pivot away from that brand (this includes the aforementioned Lohan, who was distancing herself [in more ways than one] from Disney around 2006). But Trachtenberg was nineteen during the time of filming. And yes, as many remember, it was Kim Cattrall’s first role after Sex and the City ended, which made it almost as momentous as Trachtenberg 1) doing a surprising amount of key stunts and 2) reeling in the first crowd by performing to Madonna’s “Ray of Light.”
The very millennial-ness of Ice Princess wasn’t just because of “subtle” telltale details like the movie opening with a song by Aly & AJ called “No One” (which sounds like a rip-off of Avril Lavigne’s “I’m With You”), but because it actually dared to get meta in a way that only the generation it was speaking to would understand. This moment arrives when Tina Harwood (Cattrall), the local coach who owns the ice skating rink, catches Casey (Trachtenberg) spying on her skaters. Yes, that word: spying. So it is that screenwriter Hadley Davis couldn’t pass up the chance to make a meta reference to Harriet the Spy as Casey insists to Tina—who keeps accusing her of spying so that she can steal her skaters’ moves—that she’s legit because, “I have a notebook.” Teddy (Trevor Blumas), the Zamboni driver/Tina’s son, takes a look at the notebook in question, containing various arcane physics-y math formulas, and tells Tina, “Whoa. Yeah. Definitely spy code.” Such is the far-reaching clout of Trachtenberg’s debut feature alone.
And, as for anyone who tries to deny the weight of Trachtenberg’s influence on the millennial mind, well, perhaps they ought to heed her in character as Harriet when she tells Golly (Rosie O’Donnell), “Talk to the hand, ‘cause the face ain’t gonna listen.”
