Who is a witch if she doesn’t have powers? When fans last saw Agatha Harkness, she was stripped of her powers, trapped in her mind under a spell, and as seen in the trailer, living life as a detective similar to HBO’s Mare of Easttown. However, the spell has now become distorted because of the events of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. In Agatha All Along, a body is suddenly found crushed by blunt force trauma. Agatha is on a mission to discover the identity of a woman and what happened to her. But what happened to Agatha after the events of Wandavision? This is not where Wanda left her, and even Agatha knows something is off. Thus begins the exploration of Agatha, where viewers will learn why her return is impactful to the MCU as she dares to reclaim her powers and understand how her history has forged her path to the future.
In celebration of Agatha All Along, Marvel Studios held a press conference with Kathryn Hahn (Agatha Harkness), Joe Locke (Teen), Patti LuPone (Lilia Calderu), Aubrey Plaza (Rio Vidal), Ali Ahn (Alice Wu-Gulliver), Debra Jo Rupp (Sharon Davis), Jac Schaeffer (creator/showrunner), Brad Winderbaum (executive producer), Sasheer Zamata (Jennifer Kale), and Mary Livanos (executive producer) to shed light on how they created this witchy series, the complicated lives of their characters, how WandaVision influenced the series, and more.
“At Marvel, there’s always a quest to have villains be not just one note, and Agatha is the ultimate example of that. She’s so complicated, has so many different dimensions, and is always thinking about world domination. There’s always something personal, nefarious, and complex. Which is where we sort of began with her. Then, when Kathryn was cast, it became an everything-character. She was so incredibly funny and personable, sort of like a kitschy sitcom. But then there was this huge scope of her, like, voracious appetite for power. Kathryn embodied all of that. There was the small and the fun and the charm, and then there was the gravitas. And she’s a character I feel like we can explore forever,” said Schaeffer.
“Like WandaVision, it has a grab bag of different tones, which is so amazing. We say it has music, but it’s not a musical. It has drama, but not a drama. Comedy, but not exactly a comedy. It’s all of those things. That was all kicked off by Hahn, who really embodied just absolutely everything in WandaVision. Like WandaVision, Agatha All Along has a really fun iterative quality. This time around, we are almost wholly practical. We’re recapturing sort of the golden age of Hollywood filmmaking like we did with WandaVision, but this time with fantasy and horror,” said Livanos.
“I left WandaVision with an appetite for more. It was so exciting to do all those different shows and to do all the hair and makeup, wardrobe, everything. When we decided to do a show based on Agatha, it was like, ‘We gotta do it times a thousand. On WandaVision we had done a lot of practical because it was appropriate for the era, but we really doubled down on that, but it was so much harder and so much grander and really satisfying. On WandaVision, it was like very precise, which shows what we were doing, and this one is really kind of broken open. It’s a lot of my personal influences. I’m a NeverEnding Story, Dark Crystal, Labyrinth kind of gal. Being on the sets, I felt like I was six years old, and it was thrilling,” Schaeffer finished.
“First of all, I love this part so much. So much of the Agatha in WandaVision was performance. I think she’s such a performer herself. We kept calling her a blooming onion. There were so, so many layers in WandaVision [we were] able to see what was under that and kind of start to strip under those layers of defense that have been built up over centuries. She looks fabulous, but she’s not young. But just to see what was driving that underneath and get deeper and deeper was, of course, as an actor, you just want that stuff to chew on. Working with Jac felt immediately, like, sympatico in WandaVision. I just could hear the words she had written down on the page. I knew the rhythm. I knew the tone,” said Hahn.
“The villain part is fun and almost the easiest part because it’s her well-honed performance of everyone is beneath her. The hard stuff was allowing herself to even crack the door a little to her vulnerability, ’cause that just felt like ah!’ Anyone could get in there now. That was the tough part, such a challenge and yet the juiciest,” Hahn finished.
Agatha All Along will not only expand Agatha’s story but will introduce new members of her coven. Joining the series is Joe Locke, who plays a mysterious, nameless character. Even though Locke’s identity is behind a spell, fan theories have theorized Locke is either Mephisto or Wanda’s son Billy Maximoff. A promo for the trailer reveals he is unable to say his name out loud or give any identifying information because of a sigil hex placed upon him. The fact spell closes his mouth with a squiggly ‘M’ isn’t quieting the Mephisto theories. As Marvel’s version of The Devil, fans became convinced Mephisto was behind the Westview events in WandaVision. Even the script kept his identity hidden, referring to Locke as ‘Teen’, which becomes a joke within the series, as that is what the other characters call him, and he responds to that name.
“Like Agatha, Teen has got a lot of layers. When you first meet him, he’s very different from how you end up with him. He goes on a big journey on the show,” said Locke. Schaeffer continued with, “When we cast a very wide net for this role, it was always Joe. I’ve said this to him, and Kathryn knows this from the chemistry read. Joe was so lovely. Everybody knows that. The character required an amount of, I call it, ‘Joe’s black hole energy,’ and Joe is able [to balance the] sweetness and beauty, but he’s able to become a black hole of energy. We have a lot of energy in this crew, and we really needed a singular performer to be able to like hold that much and counterbalance everything else. We’re so grateful Joe came to us,” Schaeffer finished.
While the cast isn’t revealing Locke’s identity or the secrets Agatha All Along holds, Locke did give viewers a hint at where they can find some clues. “The costumes hold all the secrets of the show. If you look closely at all the costumes, you’d find every twist and turn of the show in them, which I think is such a clever.” Ahn added, “Everything is deliberate; every symbol and thing you might not see unless you were standing right up close. Even in the lining of Kathryn’s coat, it’s not just a lining. There are images inside the coat the audience probably will never know about.”
Agatha All Along follows Agatha as she is joined by “a disparate, mixed bag of witches” who are all covenless. It explores what happens when these witches, who are “defined by deception, treachery, villainy, and selfishness,” are forced to work together. The series plays with witch lore and assumptions about them in a similar way to how WandaVision played with the sitcom format. Influenced by the comic series Scarlet Witch Vol. 2 by James Robinson that introduced the Witches’ Road.
“You try to make it a point to read all the appearances the character shows up in. She’s so different in a bunch of the comics, but to talk about Scarlet Witch, The Witches’ Road, the illustrations in that book are so interesting there’s an incredible amount of mixed media. Agatha serves as a guide and a mentor, but a slightly nefarious one, and that, of course, is a wonderful jumping-off point for Agatha for us,” said Livanos.
For legend Patti Lupone, who honed her talent in theater and onscreen, joining the cast as Lilia Calderu, a 450-year-old Sicilian witch and member of Agatha’s coven, whose skill is in divination, was an easy choice because she deems herself to be a witch. “Well, I think I am a witch. I do. I think I’m a Sicilian witch. But I thought I was a Sicilian witch before I got a telephone call from Jac and Mary. It just sort of was like destiny. It was like the universe was unfolding. Because I had just done something that started out as a bathhouse singer and ended up being a tarot card reader. Then all of a sudden, I was in a world where things were similar to things that had just occurred. There was no turning back, really. It was destiny.”
Livanos added, “What I find so incredible about witches is that they can be anyone, and they can be anything. What I think is so wonderful about this coven is that they’re all so different. In our really fun witch lore, we say that with any small radius there’s a group of witchy enough people to form a coven. That says something really beautiful about community, and I think people will feel that when they watch the show.”
Aside from tapping into her witchy side, Lupone adored the Witches’ Road and attempted to turn Locke into a ‘diva,’ which she soon realized she didn’t have to because ‘He’s got it.’ “When we walked onto the set, I think several of us burst into tears or started weeping. Because I don’t think, in my case, I’ve ever seen a more beautiful set in my life. It was stunning. It just was stunning.” Winderbaum added, “When people watch the show, they should know there wasn’t a single green screen in sight on that set. Everything you see on camera was actually there photographed on the day. And I think you could feel it in the performances. It feels very tactile, very real, and very grounded.”
“When we walked onto the set, I think several of us burst into tears or started weeping. Because I don’t think, in my case, I’ve ever seen a more beautiful set in my life. It was stunning. It just was stunning.” Winderbaum added, “When people watch the show, they should know there wasn’t a single green screen in sight on that set. Everything you see on camera was actually there photographed on the day. You could feel it in the performances. It feels very tactile, very real, and very grounded.”
Hahn agreed, “There was like a power when we were all together that was pretty exciting. Like, that every single person had such a strength. I remember saying at some point we would walk in that sound stage, and I felt like my head was touching the top. We were so big, and that was a really exciting feeling. We all felt these huge presences that felt very exciting.” Schaeffer added, “The day we did episode two, the singing in the basement, the crew came up to me afterwards and said they’d never experienced anything like it. This one man, the sound guy, was like, ‘That’s my favorite day I’ve ever had on set.’ It was really beautiful because each actor had to sing their part live and alone for their coverage. I got two takes of each of them doing it one after another.”
In the Marvel series, Witches’ Road is a magical pathway or bridge through which witches can travel between different magical worlds with trials along the way. Witches Road is promised to fulfill your wishes. Agatha longs to regain her powers that Wanda took from her and embarks on a journey into uncharted realms to reclaim her status. However, access to powerful, unpredictable energies is dangerous due to its many challenges and mystical beings. Calderu calls it a ‘death wish.’ But it’s hard to not wonder if this could resurrect Wanda. While no one is answering that question, Winderbaum makes us wonder about the show’s many possibilities.
“The biggest thing about this show that sets it apart is that Agatha never had her own comic book. This is an icon that Kathryn and Jac created on screen in WandaVision and was so inspiring to all of us at Marvel that we had to continue her story. Marvel is at its best when we bring these icons from the character to life and have amazing performers that bring humanity to the role. We were fortunate to have an amazing coven of actors that all were iconic, and all brought real depth and humanity to the show. I can’t wait for people to watch it,” Winderbaum stated.
Immediate fan favorite, Aubrey Plaza plays Rio Vidal, a warrior witch in Agatha’s coven with a score to settle a past that connects to Agatha’s. “I don’t think I’m allowed to say anything, which is what I love about being on this show so much; you’re not allowed to say anything, or you get in trouble. All I’ll say about my character is that you can expect the unexpected. You have no idea what’s going to happen with her, and there’s twists and turns and all kinds of shenanigans happening. That’s all I’ll say about that. Kathryn and I were both on Parks and Rec a long, long time ago, but we never really had any screentime. So, I was really excited to actually go toe to toe with Kathryn and get to sink my teeth in.” Hahn added, “Aubrey is one of those performers I admire so much. She doesn’t want to stay on the surface. She’s hilarious. I love her. We know each other socially, but we really didn’t talk that much around it. We sent a lot of songs and pictures of the moon. Little nuggets. We were nuggetting back and forth. It was psychological preparation.”
As Hahn and Plaza were getting to know each other through their ‘psychological preparation,’ Ahn was understanding Alice Wu-Gulliver’s personal baggage. “She has a lot of emotional growth she needs to do, [which can be said] about a lot of the characters in the show. She’s in hiding when you meet her, wearing a disguise to the world. It was interesting to play with how much you reveal and mapping that out. She’s someone who’s acting way tougher than she actually is, and I think that’s always interesting. I want some of that in my own life.”
Zamata’s character is but different as Jennifer Kale; she is the only witch who has her life and career together. She is purposeful, poised, and in charge. She doesn’t need Agatha; Agatha needs her, and she’s not afraid to let her know this. Playing a sorceress and member of Agatha’s coven was perfect for Zamata, who already had a fascination with witches and witchcraft before auditioning for the series, writing material about the subject for her stand-up special, The First Woman. She was influenced by Kristen J. Sollee’s book Witches, Sluts, and Feminists: Conjuring the Sex Positive.
“Jennifer, like everybody in the coven, she needs to work on trusting other people. Agatha has a long history with a lot of witches. But we have a nice fun love-hate thing going on, and it makes a very fun scene partner when we’re actually playing together. Jennifer wants to be able to open herself up to other witches and also find what she is desiring at the end of the road. I think that’s what starts this whole journey.”
Returning from WandaVision is Debra Jo Rupp, but not as Mrs. Hart, who was last seen under Wanda’s spell. She is her real persona, Sharon Davis, and unlike the other witches who agree to join the coven, she seemingly gets tricked into joining because they need a Green Witch. Ms. Hart and Davis do love gardening. “There’s nothing real deep about Sharon. She was kind of a fish out of water, and one of the most fun experiences I have ever had. It was just magic. It was just magic. It’s a whole different world for our little Sharon, and Jac just created a wonderful, wonderful character in her.
It’s clear to see Agatha All Along is about sisterhood, found family and unlocking the mysteries of the past. While it’s hard to know if Agatha will become a reformed witch or if Teen has as a devious plan for them all, this series will definitely leave a lasting impression on its viewers like it did the cast and creatives.
“I hope when they watch it, they feel what we felt when we made it. It was a very special experience for all of us. I hope that comes through, and that’s what they take away,” said Jo Rupp. “You’re watching all these characters be so courageous; I feel like it inspires people to keep trying; all of them are kind of a mess, but they’re pushing through that, and that’s really beautiful in the story,” Ahn added. Zatama chimed in with, “You see in the show this coven is discovering you can have magic within you and externally; it’s all around you. Hopefully people who watch it also realize that in their own lives.”
Always full of insight, Plaza ended with, “I hope people start dabbling into the dark arts more and start trying to harness the power of the moon, which I’ve been saying for years is real.”
Agatha All Along will release on Disney+ on September 18th with its first two episodes. The other seven episodes will be released weekly until November 6. It will be part of Phase Five of the MCU.
