Part of the problem with starring in a raunchy teen comedy when you're young is that perhaps one day, you'll have to come to the grim realization that your children might watch said movie. American Pie star Alyson Hannigan is now learning that the hard way.
Hannigan now shares two daughters, Satyana, 15, and Kiev, 12, with her Buffy the Vampire Slayer costar and husband of 20 years, Alexis Denisof. And although the 50-year-old was thrilled that Taylor Swift name dropped her cult film on "So High School," a track from the singer's 2024 album The Tortured Poets Department, she's glad that her kids aren't yet interested in watching it.
"When they were in elementary school, there was a phase where they both wanted to see stuff that we’d been in, like Buffy or whatever, and they were still too young," Hannigan told Us Weekly this week while promoting a new partnership with Kevin’s Natural Foods.
She explained that while the couple wanted to wait until the girls were older to view their work, she thought it would be OK to let them watch the 1987 music video for George Harrison's "Got My Mind Set On You" that Denisof starred in. But that didn't exactly go over well with her girls.
"I accidentally traumatized them by showing them a video that my husband had done when he was, like, 17," she recalled. "He’s a little teenager. He’s adorable, but [his character is] trying to catch this girl’s eye at the arcade. And something happened when they watched that where they didn’t like seeing their dad—even though he is a teenager, looks nothing like he does now—flirting with somebody else."
"And they immediately were like, ‘Hmm, we don’t wanna watch How I Met Your Mother. Because I’m married to somebody else, and something just switched where they don’t wanna see us with anyone else," Hannigan continued "So I kind of got off the hook there! I was like, ‘Fantastic!’ And it was him, not me. So, perfect!"
“They haven’t mentioned that they wanna see it, but they know how exciting it is. Taylor might’ve piqued their interest, but not that they’ve mentioned," she added of American Pie. "That’s the one I dread the most. Hopefully, I can just ride it out until they’re in college."
With any luck, Hannigan won't have to hear her kids utter the phrase, "This one time, at band camp," until they're in their 30s at the very minimum, if ever.
