Agatha All Along Stars: The Witches’ Road at Heart of Series Is a ‘Trippy’ Set That Used No Green Screen
No green screen magic was needed to conjure a key set piece in Disney+’s next Marvel series, Agatha All Along.
In the WandaVision follow-up that’s been three-and-a-half years in the making (and debuts Wednesday, Sept. 18 with the first two episodes), Agatha Harkness (played again by Kathryn Hahn) finds herself down and out (of power) after a young goth dubbed Teen (Heartstopper‘s Joe Locke) helps break her free from the spell cast by Scarlet Witch Wanda Maximoff.
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Agatha’s interest is gradually piqued when Teen asks her to take him on the Witches’ Road, a legendary gauntlet of trials that, if survived, rewards a witch with what they’re missing.
So, The Wizard of Oz, but kinda inverted…?
In addition to Hahn and Locke, the cast includes Patti LuPone as Lilia Calderu, Sasheer Zamata as Jennifer Kale, WandaVision‘s Debra Jo Rupp and Emma Caulfield Ford as Mrs. Hart/Sharon Davis and Dottie, Alice Wu-Gulliver as Ali Ahn and Aubrey Plaza as Rio Vidal, plus Maria Dizzia, Paul Adelstein, Miles Gutierrez-Riley and Okwui Okpokwasili.
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The Witches’ Road looms large in the latest Agatha trailer (released Aug. 9 at D23 and embedded above), and if Brad Winderbaum, Head of Streaming at Marvel Studios, wants you to know one thing, it’s that said road is rather real.
“When people watch the show, they should know there wasn’t a single green screen in sight on that set,” Winderbaum asserted at a D23 press event. “Everything you see on-camera was actually there, photographed on the day. And you can feel it in the performances. It feels very tactile and real and very grounded.”
Lupone, a two-time Tony Award winner and no stranger to fine sets, similarly sang the Witches’ Road’s praises.
“When we walked onto the set, several of us burst into tears,” she shared, “because I don’t think, in my case at least, I’ve ever seen a more beautiful set in my life. It was stunning, simply stunning.”
Walking barefoot in the “dirt” of the Witches’ Road set, past individually painted tree leaves, “was so immersive,” Hahn said, that “you didn’t have to ‘shake off the outside world.’ You felt so implanted in this practical place. And because it was mostly practical, that also felt very witchy, connected to the Earth… and also unexpectedly trippy!”
Watch the Agatha cast sing “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” at D23:
Want scoop on Agatha All Along, or for any other Marvel TV show ? Email [email protected], and your question may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line!
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