‘Agatha All Along’ Showrunner Unpacks Lilia’s Trial, Rio’s Reveal And More Ahead Of Final Two Episodes
SPOILER ALERT: This piece contains spoilers for Episode 7 of Agatha All Along, titled, “Death’s Hand In Mine.”
The seventh episode of Agatha All Along tested Patti LuPone’s Lillia Calderu in a trial by Tarot card, throwing viewers for a loop in Lilia’s own life and timeline because she experiences events of her existence out of order.
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Showrunner and creator Jac Schaeffer confessed that brains were melted in the construction of the time slippages, which took a true team effort as shots pieced together in this episode had been threaded through the previous six. She also praised LuPone for her openness to take on the task of Lilia’s heroic last moments.
“She advocated for — there were times where I tried to cut stuff and she never wanted to cut anything because she loves the words,” Schaeffer told Deadline. “She wanted to have a lot of conversations. She wanted to know Lilia’s arc, because she emotionally unravels over the course of the episode, and then builds herself back up.”
Schaeffer also discussed the smallest of details, Easter eggs, that big reveal about Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal and much more in the below interview.
DEADLINE: Episode Seven, seems like something that you would have planned before, beating out other episodes. Can you talk to me about how you made all those connections? I’m thinking specifically of the different Tarot card poses and shots.
JAC SCHAEFFER: We certainly had to have the script done and locked before we went into production, which is how we were with all of the episodes. We didn’t break it any earlier than the other episodes. We went chronologically in the break of the season, but we earmarked places where we could do what we called Lillia’s bops, and they were modular in nature. Once we really got clear on what the structure of seven was going to be, then we could drop them into the other episodes. The streamlining and the honing of that was something that went deep into prep, but we had to have it locked by the time we were shooting, because we had to block shoot those little bop moments.
DEADLINE: Viewers got to experience how Lilia lives her disjointed life. How tricky was that to structure in the episode itself?
SCHAEFFER: It was really hard. My brain melted, the writers, Cam Squires and Gia King, their brains melted it. Our Associate Producer Ishi Metkar was my second brain when I was directing, because it really took a whole extra human to hold what are the transitions and what bop feeds into the next one. I held it emotionally in my heart and in my brain, and I knew it really well. But when you get to, “Okay, we’re lining up the shot that connects to the thing that we shot two months ago, that’s where you get really sweaty, and you need more than just yourself to make it happen.
DEADLINE: Did Patti LuPone ad lib any lines in this episode?
SCHAEFFER: You know what? I can’t think of an ad libbed moment. What I do know is she advocated for — there were times where I tried to cut stuff and she never wanted me to cut anything because she loves the words. She wanted to have a lot of conversations. She wanted to know Llilia’s arc, because she emotionally unravels over the course of the episode and then builds herself back up.
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SCHAEFFER: My favorite moment, with Patti, is where she says, “I was falling, I will fall.” We did that camera move, which I’m not great at moving the camera, it’s something that I am aspiring to be better at. My DP, Jon Chema helped me with that, and Caleb Heyman, who was the DP on the earlier episodes who pushed for that, but my brain doesn’t always think of it. That one was my idea. And to tell Patti, “Okay, we’re on this side of Laura [Boccaletti], the actor who was playing Maestra — Okay, we’re when we’re over Laura’s shoulder, you are confused, and then we pass behind Laura, and it all clicks into place.” And you tell that to Patti LuPone, and she’s like, “Got it.” And then she does it, and it’s so beautiful.
DEADLINE: Is Maestra her mother, Coven leader? Could you talk more about that history?
SCHAEFFER: Yeah, you know, I would love that to be at fans’ interpretation. In my mind, she is a teacher. She is some an elder witch in Lilia’s community of origin, but I know that there are people on the production who assumed it was Lily as mother, and I’m also fine with that. I think that she is a matriarchal figure, and that’s what’s essential to the character.
DEADLINE: I loved when she calls Teen Teenager.
SCHAEFFER:This morning I was texting Cam and Gia the writers, because I was like, “Who, which of you wrote that?” And they were like, “We thought you wrote that.” No one can remember who wrote it. And I’m like, a line that good, someone has to take credit. I think it was Cam. It sounds like Cam to me.
DEADLINE: I was thinking she could have said Billy Maximoff. Speaking of Teenager, when he fires all those questions at Agatha on the road in the beginning of the episode, is it meant to cast doubt when he says “I don’t think you’ve ever been on the road at all”?
SCHAEFFER: I think he has a point [laughs], and I think he is suspicious of Agatha in all ways now. I think he is at a point where anything that she says, he’s gonna question it.
DEADLINE: He also says, when talking about Wanda, “She’s not my mom. I have a mom.” And then later he asks, am I Billy? Am I William? He’s obviously still struggling with that identity. Can he ever fully be both or one? Are we gonna see that unfold?
SCAEFFER: That’s a great question. I think that’s what we sort of distilled as the arc for this character, is integration of self, and at this point in the narrative, he’s still in process.
DEADLINE: How did you decide which character would dress up as, which witch?
SCHAEFFER: That was really fun. We made those decisions in the writers’ room, I’m fairly certain, because they feel like they were always that. For Billy, the Maleficent look, it’s a point in the season when he is really feeling himself. He really is stepping into himself, and he also, is no longer under Agatha’s thumb. With the headpiece and with the shoulders, he’s bigger, he is more. There’s so much theatricality to that look and also darkness to it. So that felt very right. Of course, for Agatha classic, OG wicked witch from the Wizard of Oz books, which is one of our big touchstones for the show.
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SCHAEFFER: Lilia is the hero of the episode, but putting her in the Good Witch look was about pinging her perennial resentment of the stereotyping of witches, but really it ends up suiting her, because she is good after all, and we all know it, and we all feel it in our hearts. For Jen, it felt like such a fabulous reversal. She’s the one who’s been in pink the whole show. She carries herself like a princess. She’s so very femme. To put her in something that she would feel in the immediate reduced by, when in fact, the crone is about wisdom and knowledge, there is something actually quite truthful about that look for her, and she is still, in the course of the show, in process as well, like Billy.
DEADLINE: Agatha gets a reading, but then Billy gets a reading, We don’t get to see the Sun card. Will we maybe see what is on that card in future episodes? Will that connect to his arc at all?
SCHAEFFER: I remember, I saw it on the day. I guess that was maybe an editing choice for us. I can’t remember, but to answer that question, there is a lot in this episode that has larger meaning.
DEADLINE: What does it mean that Rio is Death? Could you talk more about that? Agatha knew this already. How does that change what we’ve seen so far?
SCHAEFFER: We’ll learn a bit more so there’s only so much that I can say. She is the personification of Death, and Agatha is a person who has killed a great number of people. It was a discovery in the writers room, or an idea that, if Agatha was going to have someone from her deep past who was really vital, the question was, “Who would Agatha be attracted to? Who would Agatha be embroiled with? who would kind of turn Agatha’s head?” And the answer was Lady Death. We felt so lucky that we got the approval to to have the character of Death in our show, and even more so that Aubrey Plaza stepped into the role, because, I mean, not of folks on the planet can convincingly play the character.
DEADLINE: I just want to say, too, I love your green sweater and your black heart pin. I feel like that goes with the episode.
SCHAEFFER: This is a pin that is my dear friend, who is also a witch, has the same pin. So I was, I was wearing this out of solidarity for her today.
DEADLINE: Back to Aubrey Plaza – Rio’s the original green witch, and then they look to Agatha. I was curious about that as well, with the Earth witch, death vibes? I’m sure we’ll find out more.
SCAEFFER: I would love to talk about that with you, but yeah, we’ll find out more about that later.
DEADLINE: Lilia has a heroic moment where she slays the Salem seven. She reverses that card. She hangs on to the table for a second, and the timer flips, and that seemed she could have more time. Was that at all a consideration that she survives, or was this very much her final bow?
SCHAEFFER: The conversation of, what are the stakes of this show and what are the stakes of the Witches’ Road was a really big and important conversation for this show. We wanted the show to be a horror show, also a comedy, also a drama, all of the things. The first half of the show has the horror texture, but it is lighter, it is more comedic, it is campier, it is more theatrical, but it was the design that as we move forward in the show, things would get more real, and it’s been so wonderful to see that fans really care about these characters. People are heartbroken, and I’m kind of heartbroken, but also it’s a form of respect, I feel, on the part of the creators of the show that we are trying to take death seriously and pay tribute to these women on their journeys. The short answer to your question is, it was an enormous, ongoing conversation the entire time we were making the show.
DEADLINE: Some detailed questions – was the castle floor meant to resemble a chess or checkers board? And what phase of the moon was this trial for Lilia?
SCHAEFFER: I love that analysis of it being like a chess board. That wasn’t the literal thing. I think it was a design feature of castles like this, the checkerboard floor, but it is wood because those swords are real, and they were on piano wire, and when they fell, they stuck into the floor. We had to have a particular kind of floor where the where the swords would lodge into it. Not all the swords were real, but the hero swords were real. The ones that fell, fell, landed hard. They were scary.
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SCHAEFFER: It’s air because, Lilia’s air, and that’s why there’s falling, and that’s why it reverses, and that’s why the swords fall. We had a lot of early ideas. We were, “They’re on a bridge, they’re hanging, they’re on a boat.” But we were our North Star was that Lilia is air.
DEADLINE: Did the runes around the rim of the table. Did those have any certain meaning? There was of course the “Your path runs out of time” for Lilia’s trial.
SCHAEFFER: Your path winds out of time was meant to be of consequence, and there were so many iterations of what Lilia’s trial would be, and what the spread would be, and what the verbiage of all of it would be. “Your path winds out of time” was something that stuck through all of the iterations. Also because The Witches’ Road, your path, it felt correct for the theme and the world of the show. The specific runes, they’re not directly, of import on what’s transpiring In that moment.
DEADLINE: I noticed the like the veins in the tunnel as they go to the next whatever is going to happen change color from they were yellow, another green. Is that symbolic of things to come?
SCHAEFFER: Yes, I think I can say this now that the color of the road signifies the upcoming trial. So yellow is yellow was was air and Lilia divination trial, and orange was Alice in the fire trial. Agatha was purple in the spirit trial. So yeah, if you look in that Iron Maiden, you’re gonna see some green vines.
DEADLINE: The last thing Lilia says to the trio as they walk through. A lot of fans are picking up that it’s like a Wizard of Oz homage. Can you talk more about that?
SCAEFFER: The thing that I love most about The Wizard of Oz is is that each of the characters is so serviced. It’s very prescriptive right, the brain, the heart, the courage, but that’s so satisfying in storytelling so when they’re all sort of like going out and they each get a moment with Lilia, it’s very Wizard of Oz. It’s also, for me personally, the kind of storytelling that I really enjoy, that it feels, poignant and meaningful. And, I mean, that’s all we really ever want, right? A person wants to connect with the person in front of them.
DEADLINE: And for Billy’s spell book that she gives back, what does that symbolize because he lost it?
SCAEFFER: He lost it on the broom flight, they went upside down, and it fell and, and then it it fell somewhere on the road, and so our logic is it fell and fell through the mud and landed in the tunnel where Lilia stumbled upon it. Their relationship arc in this episode is, she’s furious at him because he tried to kill her, but they repair and find each other. And she recalls that she protected him with the sigil, and he is grateful for that. That handing over of the spell book at the end, I think, is the healing of their rift, and also the imparting of the knowledge. She is the oldest witch in this group, she has the most wisdom. She is handing him the sort of the tool of of education in a witchy community.
DEADLINE: Maybe you meant this too, but he didn’t have it while the big reveal happened of who he is, and then he gets it back, which I thought was really cool.
SCHAEFFER: That’s a nice interpretation. That’s nice.
DEADLINE: With the metro station stop, and Jen’s question of it being a way off the road. What was, the choice to picture that and have that be the first time the Salem seven come back?
SCHAEFFER: In any story, I love a moment where a character is in a world or a situation that they don’t want to be in, and whole journey is like, ‘I’m trying to save myself from the situation.’ And then they’re given a ticket out, and they reject it because of the characters, because of the people that they love. I love that moment in any story. We wanted that for Jen because we felt like, of all the characters, Jen would be the one to be like, “ticket off this, an exit sign?” and that she would like, push everyone out of the way and save her own ass. To get her to a point where she rejects the off-ramp out of solidarity with her sisters, seemed so impactful. As far as the subway station itself, that harkens back to the little line that Mrs. Hart says in episode 3, where she says, “All I expected to see down here was the remnants of our failed public transit system.”
DEADLINE: Everything connects. You mentioned the sigil. Lilia was the one that cast it. Any reason it’s shaped how it is?
SCHAEFFER: The design of the sigil took a while. The way we were trying to do it was, like, and some sigils are done this way, where, you you have a word — now I’m gonna get this wrong — I knew it for so long, but it’s like, you cross out either all the vowels or all the consonants, and then you take the remaining pieces of letters and you kind of heal them together. And so we did that, and then added some embellishment. When we designed it, it was like upright. And then when we put it on its on his mouth, it just ended up looking like an ‘M’ or a ‘W’ which, which I feel like none of us were really looking at because we had, we had taken such pains to design the vertical version [laughs]. It works out, yeah, but it was like a long process to design. We wanted it to feel a part of the sort of the witchy corner of the MCU that we had established with the runes in WandaVision that then carried into how Strange, has used runes now, and so we wanted to have that same serif feel to it.
DEADLINE: So it wasn’t like a specific word, like Maximoff, or William?
SCAEFFER: I think it was, and I’m embarrassed that I don’t know this for sure, but I think it was Billy Maximoff. We sigilized Billy Maximoff. In early incarnations of the script, there was going to be him solving it, but it was so hard and the name is so long that we reduced the mythology of it a little bit. Got
DEADLINE: With the line of Jen being the path ahead, as you said, she’s still unfolding too. What non-spoiler version can we expect from these next two episodes?
SCHAEFFER: I want to be so articulate here, and I am worried I’m going to fail myself and everyone else. More than anything, we want this to be a satisfying, emotional experience. What I hope people can look forward to is a further, deeper exploration of these characters and their truth.
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