Emmy nominee Kathryn Hahn on the making of Agatha and what she really thinks of the WandaVision finale
"There’s something elemental about Agatha in her full witch mode that feels very close to me as a kid."
TV Features Kathryn Hahn
Disney+’s WandaVision told its grief-laden story with a trip through sitcom history, delighting fans of the comics, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Nick At Nite alike. But if series creator Jac Schaeffer had been inclined to use a sex-positive drama or bold comedy as the show’s framing device, the stroll down TV memory lane might have featured even more Kathryn Hahn (never a bad thing). The two-time Emmy nominee has starred in several inventive and provocative shows, including Transparent, I Love Dick, Mrs. Fletcher, and I Know This Much Is True. Hahn will next appear opposite Paul Rudd and Will Ferrell in Apple TV+’s The Shrink Next Door, continuing her impressive trek across platforms and genres.
Though she’s made herself at home on the small screen, her film credits offer just as many entry points into the Kathryn Hahn fandom (or “Hahndom,” as only we call it). The actor broke out in comedies like Step Brothers before starring in more intimate dramedies like Wanderlust and Afternoon Delight, then throwing herself right back into bawdiness with Bad Moms. But even with all this versatility and verve on display, Hahn is still at a bit of a loss for why Marvel came a-knockin’ on her door, Lobster Thermidor recipe in hand, with a fantastic role: that of Agatha Harkness (a.k.a. Agnes), a seemingly ageless witch who goes toe to toe with Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), who is now officially the Scarlet Witch.
Hahn was more than up to the task, effortlessly shifting from black-and-white busybody to fearsome foe, at times stealing the show away from the requisite superhero pyrotechnics, and earning an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. The A.V. Club spoke with Hahn about working with MCU veteran Elizabeth Olsen, witches, what she has in common with Agatha, and her thoughts on that divisive finale. But as for what drew Marvel to her in the first place, it was Kathryn Hahn all along.
The A.V. Club: You’ve been at the center of a few adaptations recently, including I Love Dick and Mrs. Fletcher. WandaVision also has source material that you could draw from, whether you’re talking about the MCU or comic books. What kind of research did you do for the role of Agatha?
Kathryn Hahn: Oh, I did a ton. At the beginning, I was given a huge binder from Mary Livanos, our producer, who’s kind of worked on all things Marvel. And what she gave me basically covered from the first time Agatha Harkness is mentioned in any Marvel comics. I wish I had them with me, but I believe it was, God, I mean, I think it was in #66 or #61 and all the way through—when she’s in the Fantastic Four with Nicholas Scratch. And so I was able to see how she was represented all the way through.
The way she was presented then, I kind of had to throw all that way because she’s touched on in so many areas in the Marvel comics. I had to create my own bird out of what I was given in these scripts. So, all of that is in there. This is Agatha: she’s still a centuries old witch, she just presents differently. She’s still a nanny, she’s still a mother. She still was in New Salem. She still probably is all those things, but how she manifests in this world, at this time with Wanda, is that she probably felt this unbelievable magic that she couldn’t put her finger on. It was something that she had been looking for probably for centuries and had to get to the bottom of, and found herself in Westview, pretending with Wanda just to try to find out the source of this magic beyond even her understanding of magic.
AVC: We know that magic came naturally for Wanda while Agatha spent years learning and perfecting. Did you see them as opposites, and did you make that part of your performance?
KH: Yeah, they are. I mean, we talked about the Amadeus/Salieri relationship. [Agatha] was this older witch looking at this young, beautiful, innately, profoundly, perfectly natural God-given talented witch. Magic just came to her; she just had it. And it was something that I [as Agatha] had been studying for centuries to achieve—this chaos magic that she just had and I could never achieve. That was something that we really leaned on. It was really important to us to try to investigate. This wasn’t a typical antagonist-protagonist relationship. They could be friends, they could be mentors, they could be mother-daughter. It could be so many different things all at once; I didn’t just have to be a villain the whole time. There was many, many different layers to this relationship all at once.
There’s something elemental about Agatha in her full witch mode that feels very close to me as a kid.
AVC: So much went into the creation of this character, from the costumes by Mayes C. Rubeo to the great grasping motions Agatha uses. But is there any part of Kathryn in Agatha?
KH: Oh, that’s such a good question. I mean, it was important to me that there be something. There was something about, as learned as Agatha is, and as kind of by-the-book as she’s described, there was something really interesting to me that—especially how we see her in Salem with her mother and her origin story—there just be something like “dirt under the nails” about her. That there just be something about roots and about trees… There could be something natural. And there is something about witches that I know to be true, that there is something about the natural world that a witch is connected to. Even now, you think of witchcraft and there’s something about the moon and about controlling nature.
So there was something about the roots of a tree to her that I wanted see in her. I worked really closely with Mayes, who was an amazing collaborator. You see vines kind of going up Agatha’s dress. I didn’t want there to be like chest cleavage showing. Mayes was a really great collaborator with that. Her hand movements to me feel very, like you said, clawing. We just kept seeing trees or vines. To me, there’s something in that, in her physicality that reminds me of me when I was a scrappy kid in Ohio. I can’t describe it. I never like really thought of this before, but there is something of me in her, for sure—playing outside, dirt under the nails, matted hair, dirty hair. There’s something elemental about Agatha in her full witch mode that feels very close to me as a kid.
AVC: That kind of goes hand in hand with something you’ve said about your husband seeing the version of you that loves to ham things up when you’re playing the nosy sitcom neighbor.
KH: [Laughs.] Yes. For sure. There’s something about this part that has felt very joyful to me, just in terms of why I wanted to be an actor in the first place: It was to be able to take these wild swings in genre and scale. My first experience of performance was going to see Hansel And Gretel, the opera, and there was a witch in it. And I just remember seeing this big, wicked witch on the stage, singing opera. The scale of it was so big. And I’ve been really lucky and blessed to have been playing these very neurotic women for the last six years—very small, tight, or just smallish, scale-wise. And I love that—it’s natural, very meat and soul. But there’s something also that felt very freeing about going to this place again, that I had not felt maybe since I was a kid. That felt really fun. The allowance of this kind of scale.
AVC: What do you think it was about your body of work that caught Marvel’s eye?
KH: I mean, I have zero idea why I was thought of for this part. I have zero idea. I can’t point to one other role that I’ve done which would have been like, “Oh, yes, of course, Agatha Harkness in the Marvel Universe.” I still am like, “What?” It was just the weirdest alignment of stars. I’ve done big things in comedies. I did Bad Moms, so maybe that was it? But I don’t know. I can’t point to one thing, that was recent, that would have done the thing. I have no idea.
AVC: You have done so many different types of movies and shows that it’s hard to pinpoint the role. It’s even hard to sum up a Kathryn Hahn-type character. But I usually get the sense that your character knows something the rest of us don’t.
KH: Well, that’s really cool. That’s really awesome. I certainly don’t feel that in my real life at all, but maybe the parts that I play do. [Laughs.] I went in for the general and then it was like a couple of days later, they were like, “We think we have a part for you.” And it was this part.
AVC: Marvel was already this massive entity, but this is the first time we’ve seen one of its properties gain real awards traction. WandaVision earned nominations across the board, including in the lead acting categories. Do you think that when someone like yourself who has a bit more indie cred than, say, some of the other people that might be involved in the MCU, that kind of helps give genre shows more of an edge when it comes to awards?
KH: I don’t think that it would be anyone that has indie cred’s involvement. I think that it was just the perfect storm of artists and material. All of the Marvel artists involved in this particular piece of material were able to shine in ways that they’ve always had in them. They’re incredible artists, in every department. I was floored by what I saw these Marvel departments do. I think that it was just Kevin [Feige]’s idea for this show that just blossomed into this bird, and this allowance that gave these artists, who had been working on these projects for so many years, the freedom to do this with what they’ve always been able to do. I think it makes total sense just to see these incredible artists that usually blow up buildings in Marvel movies, and now just kind of using wires to move plates around for like the practical magic in the ’50s episode. [Laughs.] You know what I mean? Or like the hair and makeup doing those amazing period wigs. It goes down to the underwire, bullet bras from the ’60s—the corsets and the beautiful, bright fabrics that they would use, because they knew that they would work the best for black and white. All of these artisans and the composers and the special effects and our amazing DP. So, I don’t know. I still think that I can’t pin it on any one person or necessarily anything indie, I just think it all just happened to work. It was a perfect storm.
AVC: What do your kids think of you joining the MCU? A lot of actors have said that it impresses them. When we talked to Jean Smart after she joined the cast of Legion, she said her son finally thinks she’s cool.
KH: Oh my god. Well, she’s always been cool. [Laughs.] Well, my kids, in the beginning, they wouldn’t give me anything. But I think after the show being out for quite a while, and now we can safely say it’s been a big deal, they finally think it’s cool. They’ll never really tell it to my face, but I do think they think it’s cool. They can’t say it to me, I’m their mom!
AVC: Back in March, you did an interview with The New York Times, and you said you didn’t necessarily see what happens to Agatha in the finale as a punishment. That, after scheming the way she has and stealing magic for centuries, she maybe needs a rest. Do you still feel that way five months after the finale?
KH: I’m glad you brought that up because I actually don’t. I think it’s kind of the worst. I kind of was making a joke when I said that. I actually do think it’s kind of the worst. I mean, to clip her wings and put her somewhere like that with boring people and not have anything to do. It’s the worst, it’s a nightmare. Yeah. I mean, [Wanda] basically lobotomized her.
AVC: That actually happens on a massive scale in the show; it’s basically the whole town being held hostage. By the end of it, Agatha’s looking, maybe not sympathetic, but you are kind of like, hmm, did she have a point?
KH: Well, exactly. I say like, “You’re cruel. You have no idea what you’re doing.” Yeah, by the very end, I’m like, “You have no idea what you brought.” I’m really trying to get her to understand the ramifications. Yeah, exactly. By the end, this girl has no idea what she’s doing.
AVC: Is there something that you learned from working on the show that you’re eager to take into the next project? Or, because I know you’re in the middle of filming, you’ve maybe already taken into your next project?
KH: I learn something from every job that I’ve done. No matter what the gig is, I’ve learned something and will bring it to the next, for sure. There’s not an experience I’ve had that I haven’t learned something from, and this was no exception. For whatever reason, I didn’t think WandaVision would be quite as deep or moving as it was. But this was such a surprisingly profound experience. I mean, I think what I learned from it was how much bigger my imagination could be. I learned so much from working with Lizzie [Olsen], who had been in this Marvel world for so long, and she was such an incredible scene partner.
I’m not used to really working with a lot of green screen or working with a lot of effects. I’m used to these tiny scenes where it’s just you and the other person and the camera and a boom operator, and it’s so small and feeling-based and very natural. This really did feel the same—even though the scale around it was so much bigger, it really did feel the shame. It’s such a testament to the director, to our amazing writer, to Lizzie, that we were able to keep that same feeling in this huge world. So I think I learned how to hold on tight to the truth of what the scene was, like the stakes and the givens, even if the scale is a little bit bigger or you’re in a different genre. Just keep holding onto the truth of it and just keep receiving what your scene partner is giving you. And I think maybe that’s what I’m trying to hold onto for this next one. There’s a lot of people in each scene, so it’s about just staying present and being there for your scene partners.
AVC: Of all your previous work, whether it was hugely popular or a little more under the radar, which one brings you the most joy when people bring it up?
KH: Oh, I mean, it’s so hilarious to me that anybody remembers anything, so it’s always so funny when somebody that I wouldn’t expect, like a middle-aged guy, says like, “I really loved Mrs. Fletcher” or “I really loved I Love Dick.” It always makes me so happy. Or like when a young kid is like, “I’ve just watched Parks And Rec and you were so fun.”
44 Comments
I haven’t yet watched WandaVision (I’ll get to it!) but I’m here to say that I’m really loving this Hahnaissance and I’m glad more people are talking about her, because she absolutely rules and elevates everything she’s in. 13-year-old me paid damn near $10 to see The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard because “Hey, it’s that lady!” It was fucking awful, but she was great. (IMDB wormhole side note: you’re telling me that at one point Jeremy Piven was considered handsome and, more importantly, charming enough to be cast as Cupid? Inch resting…)Anyway, Crossing Jordan gang, we outchea! Shout out to that weird channel that seemed to air reruns exclusively.
To your sidenote (from an Olde): Piven just played Piven in Cupid. He was sarcastic and Paula Marshall’s character did not take him seriously. It was more like a continuation of what he had done on Ellen, on his way to Entourage.IOW: Despite what the description says on IMDb, Piven’s character wasn’t drawn as “handsome” or “charming”, he was more lucky and “magical”. I don’t know that they ever established for certain that what happened was for certain more than coincidental, which reinforced why he was seeing Marshall’s therapist character.
I was thinking about Crossing Jordan the whole time! I liked her a lot in that. My dad watches that channel (I forget the name of it, but it appears to be aimed at women, with all the shows being woman centered–The Closer, Crossing Jordan, Rizolli and Isles, etc.)
I think calling WandaVision the first Marvel property to get any awards traction is doing a disservice to Black Panther’s seven Oscar nominations (including Best Picture), three of which it won to add to its SAG win for the cast and the Grammy for its soundtrack.
And Tobey Maguire got an MTV Movie Award for “Best Kiss” in Spiderman. Lest we forget.
I haven’t forgotten.
cue Enigma’s “Sadness Part I”
In a time…where to be different was to be condemned. And to be condemned…was to die.
I love Kathryn Hahn. And I hope that with I Love Dick and Mrs. Fletcher she’s leading the charge about making stories about adult women who are allowed to be horny and derive power from that. I’m glad she’s 48 and she’s allowed to play a woman in her 40s in roles that aren’t just “woman after 40 plays woman in her 60s”.
You mean all women don’t transform into dried out husks in the years leading up to 40?
Nah they spin themselves a cocoon and hibernate until their casting agent calls with a wise old lady or loveable grandmother role.
You forgot solving murders in a village. That’s an essential segment of roles for older women.
Including the occasional Mrs. Fletcher, which is sure as hell what I thought when I read that title.
is Hahn’s “Mrs Fletcher” a steamy reimagining where Jessica solves mysteries with the power of her MILFness?if not, can we get that made, Hollywood?
*If not, why isn’t it that?
I think you mean murdering people and then framing others. Jessica Fletcher is the worlds greatest mass murderer.
More of a serial killer, though. Mass murderers kill a lot of people at once.
i want kathryn hahn and betty gilpin to meld their energies and create chaos.
Whenever I’m scrolling through my several streaming services or when I get one new, I immediately add to my queue anything with Kathryn Hahn without hesitation and if there’s a trailer available, I always grab that first little taste.Sometimes it might take me a bit to actually watch the movie or show, but I always do. I’ve been a big fan since she did Free Agents with Hank Azaria. Previously, I had noticed her in other things, but I remember that’s when I started watching for her name.
We watched Bad Moms Christmas solely because it starred Kathryn Hahn (… okay, and Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis).
It looks trash but Bell and Hahn make me want to try it…..
Fair warning, we were high when we watched it, so it probably came off better than it deserved.
i watched the first bad moms for the same reason. that was some worthy cheese.
It’s cheesy, and predictable but has some great jokes and the cast seems to be genuinely having a blast. It’s worth watching, especially if you’re have a couple of drinks and want a breezy movie.
great actress, dumb character. the last two eps of wandavision were a seriously fumbled bag.
Stupid question: I’ve seen now in several different films featuring witches, where they have blackened fingers. What is the symbolic meaning of this? Is it something rooted in folklore relating to witchcraft?
I don’t know the specifics but it’s a visual signifier of the cost/decay that goes hand in hand with the ability to bring life and power (also the desiccating and veins trope they also used in Wandavision)? I also wonder if it has to do with the recurring tradition of the virgin, mother, and crone archetypes to see characters transitioning?
Kathryn also talks about the “dirt under the fingernails” aspect of the character, which while not what that looks like, it does evoke a certain sense of earthiness
The WandaVision ending:“They’ll never know what you sacrificed for them.”The people (in effect) being referred to at almost the same time:“Please stop torturing us and let us and our families go or if not that please let us die.”I can’t think of anything more tone deaf that I’ve ever seen at the moment.Enjoyed the show overall but they really whiffed it there.
I think WandaVision really highlighted how traditional comic book ethics kind of fall apart when done in live action.
Comic book ethics frequently fall apart in comic books, never mind live action.
I think it’s more of a comment on Wanda’s personal sacrifice. Considering everything that happens to her in the MCU, its kinda nuts she hasn’t just gone full villain.
Just a list:
1. Parents killed by Stark-brand weaponry and forced to remain trapped with her brother wondering when the bomb would go off.
2. Experimented on by Hydra while seeking revenge against Stark (willingly).3. Betrayed by Ultron leading to her brother’s death. Pietro being the only ‘good guy’ casualty.
4. Accidentally causes multiple deaths and put on house arrest by Stark and later imprisoned by Ross during Civil War. 5. After time spent in a relationship with Vision, forced to kill him to prevent Thanos. Forced to watch Thanos bring Vision back only to kill him again before being snapped into non-existence.6. Given a chance at revenge against Thanos, nearly succeeding only to get bombarded by heavy space-ship fire.7. Stonwalled by the government on handling Vision’s remains until she pushes the issue. Has a mental breakdown upon finding the government was lying to her and was taking Vision apart to recreate as a weapon without regard to the fact that he was a sentient being and hero.8. Creates a fake ideal family semi-consciously based upon the sitcoms watched with her real family years ago.
9. Manipulated by Agatha including a fake version of her brother.
10. Faces a weaponized version of Vision alongside her ‘family’ while the guy behind Vision’s disassembly is trying to kill them all.
11. Willingly gives up her ideal family upon the full realization of what she did, having full knowledge of the moment both her children and lover stop existing.
I mean… Wanda’s life is a freaking tragedy and it is really telling that she semi-consciously rewrites reality just to get a family. Her giving that up is a fairly large sacrifice considering the rest of the people of the town don’t mean a thing to her even when she’s not having a complete breakdown. From an outside standpoint? Yeah it seems like it is an easy choice with no comparison. But for her? She lost everything dear to her again and only came out of it with a demonic book that’ll probably result in her being possessed by Cthon.
No one’s denying Wanda went through some serious shit, but no amount of trauma morally justifies inflicting trauma on someone else.However, that’s a real-world rule in which we don’t have purple space tyrants and magic. In the real world, someone suffering as much trauma as Wanda (or whatever the real-world equivalent would be) wouldn’t be capable of doing what Wanda did. They’d barely be functional, if not totally insane and confined to an institution.
I don’t think anyone’s trying to justify the morality of the situation. Even Wanda wasn’t exactly doing it on purpose since she was essentially rewriting reality to cope with trauma until Agatha shoved her face in it. If she had the control to make it so that people could live normal lives within the fantasy and weren’t stuck in the ‘sitcom’, it might’ve even been a good place to live.
It’s more that mental health is an issue both MCU and Comic Wanda (who has it way worse) have to deal. I think even the version of Wanda from X-Men Evolution was in a mental facility because she couldn’t control her reality warping.
I do think that if Wanda was around Peter Parker’s age in-setting, it would hit harder though. But that would make the whole Vision relationship and kids disturbing even with him technically being like 2 years old. AoU treated Wanda and Pietro like misguided kids even though they were portrayed by adults (who even played a married couple in the 2014 Godzilla) and in their mid 20s. Putting her at high-school age would’ve made the breakdown, lack of control, and overall attempt at a sitcom family would’ve likely tracked better. At the very least it’d make the sacrifice seem like a bigger decision rather than a normal adult decision.
That’s the eternal rejoinder of people who defend a hierarchical status quo, even those who leaven it a bit with democratic underpinnings.“We can’t just have randos getting power. A legit looney tune will get it and then they’ll nuke the world. There needs to be some kind of a filter.”The other side of that argument is Lord Acton: you can’t actually filter it, because even if you defy all of the evidence to date and manage to create a filter that isn’t biased towards power-grabbing villains in the first place, giving a person power will make them a monster. So, how is it fair to only give it to some people and not others? You’re just dooming everyone else to a lower rung on the victimization pyramid for no real reason.And to that, what’s left to say? “Welp, I have faith that Lawful Evil is better than Chaotic Evil.”John Rawls might push back on that with his veil-of-ignorance thought exercises.
From there, it’s not much of a leap to Heath Ledger’s Joker.
its kinda nuts she hasn’t just gone full villain
She enslaved an entire town and violently fought back against the people trying to rescue said town. That’s villainous by just about any measure, and the fact that it was driven by her own grief hardly puts her at odds with other comic book villains, plenty of whom have similar tragic backstories and/or understandable motivations to complicate their heinous actions.This story was just unusually sympathetic to its villain, as was its hero, to the degree that both the story and Monica seem to treat the hundreds of traumatized victims as speed bumps on the way to Wanda’s much more important acknowledgement of grief.
I think we’re kinda mixing up terms for how to describe Wanda’s role. She’s not ‘the villain’ but is clearly doing bad things while denying reality. It wasn’t malicious. She definitely fought back when people tried to break her free but she didn’t seem to believe she was actually causing (lasting?) harm to people. She had a full breakdown and forced reality to align with her childhood memories of sitcoms. I would consider her still in the midst of her breakdown until Agatha’s reveal forced her to face the reality of the situation. When I mean full villain, I mean killing people like she tried to kill Thanos in Endgame. Even with all her fighting in WandaVision, she never went fatal and focused more on keeping people out to maintain her fantasy. She didn’t even know about the torment thee people in the town were actually going through because she was focused on her sitcom life and they were just extras needed for outside scenes.
With her powerset, if she went outright evil? You’d probably need someone like Captain Marvel going for the kill immediately to stop her.
Also, there’s the whole thing with WandaVision and Falcon&TWS kinda getting hit by the pandemic and resulting script/scene changes. The writers are on the record saying they used the delay to do some serious script changing and clarification while moving some things around. Apparently there were some parts that were getting rewritten daily for a while. I think the sacrifice line might be a remnant of rewritten scenes.
God I hated that ending so much. It made sure I’d never watch another MCU show and worked as anti-hype for that next Doctor Strange.
I’d love to pretend that WandaVision’s goal was to lean into the inherent contradictions of Marvel morality to the point where fans could no longer ignore the cognitive dissonance, but I’ve actually seen it, so I can’t. (Come at me, MCU bros.)Also I saw it with a big MCU fan, and…yeah. She had some very different takeaways about which characters were the most deserving of sympathy than I did.
Really, nothing more tone deaf in the whole universe, huh?
Oh my god I could not agree with you more. When that line was said I was thinking who the F wrote that peice of trash line and why on earth was that something that was said?
Man, there’s something about her… obviously she’s funny and talented and all that good stuff, but plenty of ladies who are funny and talented don’t inspire an immediate crush in me the way Hahn did in the first things I saw her in. And ever since I’ve been excited to see her get more and more work, and bigger roles in bigger projects. She was fantastic as Agatha. I need to watch that Mrs. Fletcher show.
Yeah, she’s just swell. Always smile when I see her. Casting her as a sitcom nutty neighbor was such inspired genius even before they got to the witch stuff.
I’m not a young kid but her character on Parks and Rec might be the best guest star/ancillary character on the show, and that’s a crowded field