Season five of Buffy the Vampire Slayer featured what was probably the Slayer’s toughest opponent:  a demon goddess who was very difficult to beat, and looked great in a red dress.

Clare Kramer, who played Glory, will be part of a special event commemorating the 20th anniversary of Buffy on Saturday night as part of  San Diego Comic-Con. Recently, she talked about her role on the show, and her new role as director of an interesting documentary.

It’s been 16 years since Kramer played Glory, and she says people still recognize her from the show. “It’s sort of like the flagship role of my career,” she says, “There’s usually two groups of people who follow my career, fans of Buffy or fans of Bring It On, and both are incredible awesome communities. But I can say that the Whedonverse community is so wonderful and been so good to me over the years that I really do feel I owe a large part of my career and success to their passionate following.”

She recalls that she based her character on Jack Nicholson in The Shining, and it made an impression on the show’s creator, Joss Whedon. She auditioned again with Charlie Weber, who played Ben (the guy whose body Glory was living in), and got the part.

Kramer had a lot of compliments for Joss and how he guided her on the show. “One of the things that stand out working with him as a director is he had such a clear vision, and often times being the writer of the scripts as well,” she says. “Sometimes when you work with certain directors, they wait for a scene to play out. He knew what he wanted the whole time, and I think that’s what gave the show such a special cadence and such a special feeling was his overall vision.” Her favorite scenes included her first fight with Buffy, and the 100th episode. She also made a brief return at the start of season seven when the First imitated Glory, and Clare says she had hoped it would have been longer.

She’s still close to many of the crew, including Amber Benson, Charsima Carpenter, Emma Caulfield, and even Summer Glau from Firefly. “We all stick together, us girls,” she says, “you know, the guys aren’t too bad, either.”

These days, she’s busy with Geek Nation, an entertainment news website and podcast network. She even has her own show, Five by Five, and occasionally reported for NPR.

She recently finished filming a documentary called Joyrider, about Andre Kajlich, the first hand cyclist to qualify in the Race Across America. He’s the brother of Bianca Kajlich, who was in Bring It On with Kramer. Andre lost both legs in an accident, but became an excellent wheelchair athlete and cyclist. He qualified for the race this year, after three years of trying, and wound up traveling the 3000-mile course in record time. In fact, he was tenth overall for males under the age of 50.

“We followed him with crew. We had about five cameras, actually seven cameras going for about 12 days,” she says. “I am very excited about it. Bianca, his sister, is one of the producers of the film, as well as Greg Grunberg.”She added Johnathan Woodward, who’s been on Buffy, Angel and Firefly, is also one of the producers.

Since she just recently finished the film, Kramer says it will take a few months before the film will be done. She has had past experience directing short films,  and other pieces for Geek Nation. Taking on a documentary is a daunting task, but it’s one she’s always wanted to do. “I knew I wanted to transition from just acting,” she says. “First I moved into the producing role, and now the directing role, and it’s definitely a place I’m going to stay. I will hopefully split my time between acting and directing.”

She’s excited about hosting the Buffy bash because it’s a chance to meet her fans. “I look at this party as an opportunity to say ‘thank you’,”she says, “thank you for supporting me over the years, thank you for being passionate, thank you for being intelligent, and I’m really looking forward to the evening. I hope it’s a lot of fun.”

People can follow Clare Kramer on Twitter at @clarekramer and Instagram at @clarekramerofficial.