Sabrina, the Teenage Witch is a great character for female readers to look up to. She’s still in high school so everyone can relate, but she’s coming into her powers. Sabrina’s powers may be more magical than real teens’, but she’s still empowering. Netflix’s new Chilling Adventures of Sabrina focuses on female empowerment, as Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) fights for her and her family’s freedom, and even helps her friends fight for freedoms at school.
“I’m lucky that I’ve fallen into shows with such feminist qualities,” Shipka said.
“I really respond to that and besides this show just being completely entertaining, magical, fantastical and wonderful, from just a cinematically beautiful perspective, it also has these elements of female empowerment and activism that I think are really important and really awesome because they’re going to reach a wide audience of people.”
Based on creator Robert Aguirre-Sacasa’s own Archie Comics run of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, the show elaborates even further.
“Just because there’s so much more time and so many more moments to explore a little bit more of that, the show definitely dives deepest into that aspect,” Shipka said. “It’s based off of the comic The Chilling Adventures, which is a more recent comic that Roberto did a few years ago. It has a lot of its own similar tones and similar storylines to that particular comic. Obviously, we have more time and more episodes, the storylines veer off into different directions. That’s really the basis of it all, but I would say the show is even tenfold more feminist just because we have more time and dialogue to explore those opportunities.”
Shipka came of age playing Don Draper’s daughter on Mad Men. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina has decidedly more female energy, since there are many more women on screen.
“The women are definitely the bosses in this show, 100%,” Shipka said.
“But at the same time, it still is a show that acknowledges the patriarchy. The patriarchal vibes are present in both the mortal and the witch world. It still focuses on the women fighting against that. By no means is it a show where the patriarchy doesn’t exist and sexism isn’t a thing. But it’s told really from the perspective of very powerful, powerful women.”
It’s not Shipka’s first time with source material either. She starred in the Lifetime remake of Flowers in the Attic, based on the V.C. Andrews books.
“I find the source material really helpful when I’m developing a character at the beginning,” Shipka said. “At this point, we’re so deep into the show that it’s not really a point of reference anymore just because I feel like I’m so familiar with the character and her experiences in a way that’s completely isolated or independent of any other kind of source material that it was really helpful in the beginning to do world building and to get a tone and vibe for the show and look for answers and come up with a sort of series. At this point, I’m so all in that the space in my brain is just pretty much taken up by my version of Sabrina and her world.”
Many fans of Sabrina came via the sitcom starring Melissa Joan Hart. That was before Shipka’s time, but she was still well aware of it before taking on the role.
“I think it came out in ’96 and I was born in ’99 and it ended in 2003 so it was before my time,” Shipka said. “Obviously it was so iconic that I knew of it and even having never seen the show, you could probably walk up to me a year and a half ago and say Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and I’d be, ‘Oh yeah, Sabrina and the cat.’ It became iconic.”
And yes, Salem the cat is in Chilling Adventures, but won’t share too much screen time with Shipka.
“I am allergic to Salem, sadly,” she revealed.
“So Salem does the best that he can but my face still likes to break out in hives from time to time. There’s three of them. We have three kitty cats, Shaq, Boomer and Edward. They are really fantastic. Honestly, they are so professional. They are absolutely great. I have nothing but nice things to say about them. I can be in the same room. It’s not a respiratory thing. It’s really just a contact thing so we make it work.”
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina premieres Friday, October 26 on Netflix.
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