While the world is currently bewitched by the recently released Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, Netflix would also like you to remember the show’s late-’90s/early 2000s predecessor, Sabrina The Teenage Witch. While markedly less Satanic (and therefore less cool) than the current iteration, the Melissa Joan Hart-led sitcom ran for long enough—and burned itself so deeply into our cultural memory—that it’s very interesting to learn what its cast thinks of the new version.
Based on a promo clip that shows them commenting on a few scenes, they’re (maybe a bit warily) into it. Aunt Zelda (Beth Broderick) and Aunt Hilda (Caroline Rhea) scream as they watch Sabrina getting chased through a corn maze by an evil scarecrow, remark on how terrifying it all looks, and generally seem amazed that their wholesome comedy version has been all gored and sexed up for 2018.
Melissa Joan Hart comments that, aside from one scene, she didn’t get to take her clothes off for her take on the comic book character; Carolina Rhea exclaims “This is not our Sabrina!” at a horror-tinged PG-13 sex scene; and everyone laughs in surprise at a (bad) prank scene from the series’ second episode.
All in all, it’s a stark reminder of how different nü-Sabrina is when compared to a sitcom where, as Joan Hart says, the spells were more about “sparkles [flying] out and glitter” than demon summoning and sex magick.
Disappointingly, considering that so many key members of the cast made themselves available for the clip, the original Salem does not come creaking out of his puppet retirement home to comment. We’ll never know what the original talking cat (which Rhea calls an “alcoholic rabbit wearing a hairpiece”) thinks of its replacement.
