Sasheer Zamata on witchcraft, superpowers and why Agatha All Along is Kathryn Hahn’s magnum opus
Sasheer Zamata on Agatha All Along (Chuck Zlotnick/2024 MARVEL)
Sasheer Zamata is magical – both on screen and off. The Agatha All Along star spills on the reality of having superpowers, on set antics with Patti LuPone and why this, out of all of Kathryn Hahn’s projects, will be the actress’s ‘thing’ for years to come.
“I like the idea that anyone can create magic, and you just have to tap into it,” Zamata muses via Zoom.
The former Saturday Night Live star and recently proclaimed ‘late-in-life-lesbian‘ is being beamed in across the pond to discuss Agatha All Along, the latest project from Marvel, and her first role in a project of such a scale – and it’s clear that both she and I recognise the WandaVision spinoff as a Very Big Deal.
It’s set to follow Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) after the events of WandaVision; for the forgetful among you, Agatha was stripped of her otherworldly powers by the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) at the end of the 2021 series, and forced to inhabit the ‘nosy neighbour’ persona she used as a disguise for its duration.
Agatha, therefore, will be all about the antagonist’s return to dastardly form, and the help she needs/enlists/forces to get her there.
And yet, as we sit on the call with multiple publicists, including a giant, faceless ‘Disney‘ screen, it’s as if Zamata is just across a café table, graciously explaining a funny story to an old friend, rather than the latest product of a gazillion dollar entertainment goliath. If you were to go for the obvious descriptor, you’d definitely call Zamata bewitching.
“I come from people who are energetically inclined,” she explains, seemingly reading my mind. “My mom would text me every time I got on a plane. She’s like, ‘I can tell you’re somewhere, I don’t know where you are, I can just feel it.'”
It’s unclear to me whether Zamata’s mother could tell that her daughter was one day going to be cast in Agatha All Along with a queer fever dream of a cast, including of course, Hahn as the titular witch, Joe Locke as a suspiciously ambiguously named Teen and Patti LuPone as a Sicilian seer named Lilia Calderu – but she has been.
Zamata is portraying potions witch Jennifer Kale, who uses “alchemy and chemistry and her environment to create magic”, according to the star. The Marvel character has a long comic book history, having tangled robes with sorcerers like Doctor Strange and monsters like Man Thing, but Zamata’s version – as with the rest of Agatha – is set to sail into uncharted waters.
“We took a lot of liberties with this character, and I think people are going to be really excited about this version of Jennifer Kale,” Zamata beams, in the way that one might speak proudly about an absent significant other.
“She’s a very wary, sarcastic person. Her and Agatha have a long history with each other, and she’s very skeptical of Agatha, because she has a bad reputation. But Jennifer has a lot of goals that she wants to achieve, and thinks that trusting Agatha might help her get closer to those goals.”
A witch? With ulterior motives? Colour us shocked.
Zamata doesn’t name any specific celebrities or figures in terms of inspiration, but is quick to pay director Jac Schaeffer (who also created WandaVision) her dues for allowing the comedian’s own extra-curricular interest in witchcraft to inform the character.
“I was actually doing reading on witches when I was cast because I already am a fan of witch lore in history, and I was looking into witches in the medical field, and midwifery, and how a lot of women were labeled witches in order to oust them from the medical field so that men could continue to dominate,” she explains.
Men? Ousting women to remain dominant? Colour us shocked.
Zamata has nothing but glowing reviews for Schaeffer, recalling that she asked the director on the first day of shooting: “Did you know you hired an actual witch?” But while she might be more in tune with the occult than many, Marvel’s onscreen take on ‘magic’ has been more ‘coloured smoke and glowing books’ so far.
That’s why I’m even more surprised when Zamata shares that “pretty much everything you see on screen” was created using practical effects – a quality that cannot be applied to many of Marvel’s recent green-and-blue screen bonanzas.
“Agatha All Along made a point to be practical,” she says proudly, “The [Witches] Road is built, they really had trees and dirt and leaves around us; they didn’t CGI a whole background, it’s there.
“We got to dive into that world and feel like we were part of that environment. We weren’t pretending that there was a tree there, there really was a tree there. And same with other elements, if there was water, there would be water. If there was fire, there would be fire.
“And you could tell that the stunts people and the props people and the set people were all having such a great time trying to figure out these challenges, and being like, ‘Okay, we had to figure out how to make water change color. What do we do?’ And then they figure it out. It was an awesome thing to be a part of and really see that magic happen before our eyes.”
Zamata has already, at this point in the call, told me that there was magic elsewhere on set. The magic of friendship. (Sorry).
For real, though, there’s a full on Patti LuPone-led conga line story and the real ‘coven’ that formed among the cast while filming – and she is, again, quick to praise them on their efforts, calling Aubrey Plaza a “firecracker” and praising Heartstopper‘s Joe Locke on his acting chops.
‘Magic’ was practiced off screen too, it turns out. The cast had “immunity sprays that we would spray on ourselves before we went to set,” Zamata grins, there were “crystals everywhere”, doorways on production were “cleansed”, and the crew “brought [that magic] to set in whatever way they knew how”.
Zamata had built in vestiges of that knowledge, exemplified in her stand-up special The First Woman, which takes the opportunity to infuse laugh out loud punchlines with – and stick with me – genuinely interesting insights on the intersection between history, feminism and magic.
“We’re not so removed from a period in our history where we were segregated”
The special touches on everything from COVID to the ‘superhumanisation’ of Black women, a phenomenon in the medical field which claimed that they felt less pain than their white counterparts, and so needed less medical attention. They’re not the first topics one might think to include – so why does Zamata?
“I don’t want to forget that that’s what happened. It’s okay to acknowledge we have had some crazy shit happen, and we’re not too far away from it.”
“My mom was one of the first black people to integrate a white school, and she’s still alive. We’re not so removed from a period in our history where we were segregated, or where people were getting murdered because of the way they looked, or the because of the way they loved. We can still turn around and still see it.”
And then conversation turns to back to Agatha herself, Kathryn Hahn. It’s hard not to remember that she’s been in TV and film for a while now – some might say all along – and probably in some of your favourite flicks. Anchorman, We’re The Millers, Bridesmaids to name just few culture-defining instalments of cinema in which she starred.
But Agatha All Along, Zamata tells me, will be Hahn’s magnum opus, her best work, her “thing”.
“[She] is so funny, and she dove into this character like I’ve never seen before. She really embodies Agatha and brought such a powerful presence to her journey. I was already a fan of many characters she’s portrayed before, but I really feel like this will be her thing.”
It’s likely to be Zamata’s ‘thing’ too. Agatha: All Along is being billed as one of Marvel’s spookiest projects yet, including marketing materials referencing classic horror flicks, and a few trailers with some jump scares to boot. Though a comedian by trade, she emphasises that Agatha: All Along has a “bit of everything,” a distinction that allowed her to flex some of those more dramatic performance muscles.
“Usually I am asked to be comedic relief in a show, and I definitely had moments like that, but I also did the most drama I’ve ever done in this show,” she says with palpable pride.
“I was asked to do so many things that I’ve never been able to do before, and it was so fun to be able to portray a different side of myself. There’ll be some fun comedic moments, but it’s mostly spooky, and that’s a fun journey, too.”
Towards the end of our chat, Zamata again begins to think out loud on her own magical proclivities. Does it make her feel set apart from those without, I ask.
“A lot of people have that kind of stuff. They just don’t think of it as magic,” she grins.
Agatha All Along is set to premiere with a double bill on 18 September on Disney+. The remaining seven episodes will air weekly.
Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.
