The MCU’s season of the witch is nearly upon us with the release of Agatha All Along.
Ahead of the series premiere on Disney+, I had the chance to chat with series creator and director Jac Schaeffer about her work on the project, including her favourite moments on set, juggling writing and directing this time around, reuniting with EP Mary Livanos, and much more.
Schaeffer’s first foray into the MCU came with the critically-acclaimed, WandaVision. For Agatha All Along, Schaeffer wore multiple hats as series creator, writer and director.
“I mean, it was everything. It was so fantastic. Directing is what I always wanted to do. It’s what I went to film school for. It’s my favorite part of the job, and so to direct this – to sort of like leap. You know, I’d done indie films, but like, this is Marvel. So to then be like, ‘Hey, I’m directing a Marvel TV show…’ And I have this cast. I said to my husband, ‘How do I direct Patti LuPone?’ And he was like, You don’t have to. That’s the nice part about Patti LuPone.’ So it was everything that I could have wished for. Of course, it’s so challenging and overwhelming, but it’s, it’s really the good stuff. And this show had everything. It was wonderful.”
When you watch the series, there are escape room-esque elements throughout and you find yourself like a fly on the wall, watching the characters use their wits to get out of some very daunting situations.
When I asked Schaeffer about this, she said, “You are correct. So in the writers room, that was the concept, a witchy escape room. Also, at the time when we were in the writer’s room, Squid Game was happening in the public consciousness. And I am such a fan of that show, and was so inspired by it. And so we sort of like applied some of that sort of system and some of that construction to what we were doing, because we couldn’t avoid it. But yeah, there was actually one writer, in particular who, he loves escape rooms. So, he sort of did a presentation on escape rooms and what makes a good escape room. So yeah, that is definitely the foundation of some of those sequences.”