Photography by Scott Council
‘I’ve been in so many ensembles where I’ve been, like, the horny mom. Or the horny divorced mom. And I loved all those parts! But there’s something about this where it was women — and this one beautiful queer boy — that just felt very next level.”
“Agatha All Along” star Kathryn Hahn is Zooming in from her LA home on her laptop, which could use a little magic itself. “I don’t want to point fingers at my children, but somebody knocked over my computer, so my screen is cracked, and it’s a million different colors. It looks like ‘Tron,’” she laughs. But not that laugh, the cackle you’re probably familiar with from her indelible turn as witch-in-disguise and omnipresent neighbor Agnes/Agatha on Disney’s “WandaVision.” The mom of two (with her husband, fellow actor Ethan Sandler) says she was more than happy to lean into the full witch persona for this gig.
“I do love a cackle,” she says. “I was so happy they let me. I was like, ‘I’ve got to cackle, you guys, come on. I know it’s on the nose, but we’ve got to have a witch that cackles.’”
Hahn’s performance was so pitch-perfect and hilarious, and so tuned in to the evolving genres of that sitcom-themed dramedy, that the studio would have been crazy not to expand her character. And they have: The Disney+ miniseries “Agatha All Along” debuts Sept. 18. “I knew it was going to be a real new adventure,” says Hahn. “It felt like there was something on a deeper level than just, like, magic and witches, and the music, which is so fun. But there was something about the whole search for your power, which was something else.”
Hahn, 51, has long been a beloved presence in film and TV, an actor you can count on to bring nuance and relatability to any plot, no matter how outlandish. But taking the lead in a series like this, she says, is a whole different animal. “I never would have thought in a million years this would have been around the corner for me.”
We rejoin Agatha after the events of the “WandaVision” finale, which left the witch without her powers or her memory and, as it turns out, marooned in yet another TV genre: crime noir. Hahn gets her “Mare of Easttown”/“True Detective” vibe on as a hard-nosed investigator working a murder in a small town.
“I love, love a hardened woman detective with a past,” she says with a laugh. “You know, she lives at work, maybe has a light drinking problem, has kind of a flirty relationship with some of her co-workers, but she lives for justice. We took it seriously; we didn’t want to really wink — no pun intended — at the audience.”
About that wink. Hahn’s got a moment in “WandaVision” — it’s when the show’s in its ’70s era — where she delivers a wink heard round the world, a wink that launched an enduring meme useful for anyone looking to connote a little duplicity. “I’m glad it’s such a flattering photo,” she says with a good-natured eye roll.
Hahn is not a social media person, has never been, but she does enjoy hearing about this stuff. “I remember going into a weed store — it’s legal in California — and seeing a sign saying ‘We just sell smoking accessories,’” accompanied by that shot of her winking face.
But the start of “Agatha All Along” does indeed play it straight, no winking. If you’ve seen the trailer, you know our antiheroine will eventually discover the artifice in her current situation and join forces with several other witches to “walk the witches’ road.” With their help, she can become the powerful entity she once was. Her coven cast is fierce: Patti LuPone, Aubrey Plaza, Sasheer Zamata and Ali Ahn — plus Joe Locke (“Heartstopper”) as a mysterious goth teen with a spell that won’t let him reveal his name or his backstory. The show unfolds into a journey on said road, one that includes an earworm of a musical number, a variety of spell-infused settings (this writer’s favorite: the Nancy Meyers house) and some lethal incidents.
Hahn’s evolution as Agatha feels like a wonderfully meta representation of her career. Much like the various iterations of Agnes in “WandaVision,” she’s been stealing the show as a character actor in mainstream films and series for decades, from early roles in “Anchorman,” “Step Brothers” and “Parks and Recreation” to her first Emmy nomination for “Transparent” and voicing the supervillain in 2018’s brilliant “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” Two other Emmy noms followed, for “WandaVision” and “Tiny Beautiful Things.”
Hahn fits into so many genres and yet always manages to be so herself that she’s a truly singular presence. A 2021 hashtag on Vulture christened the Hahnassaince, which didn’t refer to Hahn returning to the spotlight after an absence but rather a recognition that she’s been turning in brilliant performances for decades, some of which haven’t earned the raves they should.
Moving into middle age, says Hahn, conjured a bounty of new and different work and a corresponding comfort with bringing more of herself into her roles. “When I was in acting school, acting was doing different genres and different parts and, you know, slipping on wigs and costumes. That’s what I thought it was. Total transformation,” says Hahn, an Ohioan who studied theater at Northwestern University and Yale’s School of Drama. “And then there was a period when I was really asked to bring myself, and that’s where I found the most fulfillment as a performer. When I started to let go of so much artifice. That’s what we all want to see — this messy kind of shadow woman, you know what I mean?”
A polished messiness and an affinity for dark clothing are what you’ll get from a Hahn red carpet appearance, too. “I try to stick to a uniform that’s getting a little more, I want to say, masculine,” she says. “I love a suit. I really like navy, black and beige. I have a couple of great hookups that will find me these old, old Japanese men’s suits that just fit perfectly. And I love old Dries, old Celine. I love a loafer, a lug sole.” She’ll sometimes wear a heel, albeit fleetingly. “I can do it for a very brief time on a red carpet, but my husband will usually keep my Birkenstocks inside his jacket.”
Her brunette mane has also become a signature of sorts, dating back to her pre-fame days as a salon receptionist in New York. “All the guys there got together and gave me a Mason Pearson hairbrush one Christmas,” she says. “I was like, ‘Are you trying to tell me something?’” When she’d go on early auditions, she adds, “My agent of a million years ago would be like, ‘And run a brush through your hair!’”
Reader, she did not. “I have always had long, messy hair. This has always been my thing. It feels French.” It didn’t hurt that it lent a little witchy appeal, either. “I think maybe [‘WandaVision’ creator] Jac [Schaeffer] would tell you one of the main reasons I got this part was because I walked in and had a wild, messy mop of hair. She was like, ‘There’s that witch!’”
The show’s costume department was instrumental in fully bringing Hahn into her own magic. “The lead seamstress on the show had worked with, like, Lucille Ball,” she says. “She had a coven in Northern California. And she put runes at the bottom of the cape, like protection runes all the way around. And every time I put it on, the power I felt! I felt like a scarab, like one of those bugs. The whole thing felt so, so … analog.”
Her next project also takes her back into the relatively analog comedy world: an Apple+ Hollywood comedy from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, “The Studio,” in which Hahn co-stars alongside Rogen, Catherine O’Hara, Ike Barinholtz and Chase Sui Wonders. “It was such medicine after being in some heavy stuff,” she says.
But right now, she’s fully enveloped in the purple swirl of Agatha’s spell, mulling, as she says, “the idea of how every woman holds the maiden, mother and crone in her at all times. And to be able to start to feel like I do have the wisdom of just … life. To be able to pass it down. It’s a really powerful feeling. It feels like it’s all led to this amazing shadow woman, this awesome witch.”
Editor: Serena French; Stylist: Anahita Moussavian; Photo Editor: Jessica Hober; Talent Booker: Patty Adams Martinez; Hair: Marilee Albin at Prtnrs; Makeup: Jo Strettell at Walter Schupfer Management using Hourglass Cosmetics; Manicure: Stephanie Stone at Forward Artists; Fashion Assistants: Jena Beck, Tawnee Clifton; On-set Assistant: Gillian Hormel, Cat: Watson at Hollywood Animals