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Kathryn Hahn Worships Her Marvel TV Witch
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Kathryn Hahn Worships Her Marvel TV Witch

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Because Marvel’s witch Agatha Harkness has Kathryn Hahn so under her spell, she didn’t have to think twice about buying her Lego figure on Amazon.

“She has her own train; she’s holding a Darkhold. I really feel like I made it,” says the actress and star of the new Disney+ series “Agatha All Along.” “The sad part is I bought it myself and put it together, and I loved every second of it. I still had to look at the instructions.”

Hahn, 51, has played plenty of best friends and supporting roles in films and TV over the years, but is now enjoying her latest leading lady era with the 2023 Hulu dramedy “Tiny Beautiful Things” and now “Agatha.” She captured the hearts and minds of superhero fans — and got a killer theme song — as the main antagonist of the 2021 series “WandaVision”: Agatha posed as the nosy neighbor of Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) in order to use the Darkhold, a magical book, to steal Wanda’s considerable powers as the Scarlet Witch.

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Agatha has been defeated and her magical powers taken away by Wanda. That’s where we meet “Agatha” (first two episodes streaming now, then weekly Wednesdays). She’s trapped in a “True Detective”-style TV show world until old enemy Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) snaps her out of it. To get her groove back, Agatha takes on the trials of the mythical Witches’ Road with a makeshift coven that includes Teen (Joe Locke), Agatha’s young new boyfriend, who can’t say his real name due to a curse.

“Through this personal journey, we’re opening up the world of the MCU to witches, which is so great, and we’re also really opening up the message of finding your own power,” Hahn says. “How do we evolve? How do we look at aging? Can we see that the most powerful chapters are the older we get? That the wisdom we’ve gained becomes an asset and not a burden is really charged and exciting.”

But Agatha has lost none of her deceptive ways. In “WandaVision,” “she enjoyed this long game of cat and mouse,” Hahn says. “You never really knew, deliberately, what she wanted from Wanda. Was it, besides power, friendship? Was it a lover?” Her “shape-shifting” continues in the new show, though it’s more subtle. “She gets to perform and gather a coven of depressing witches,” the actress adds with a laugh. “She tries to trick them every time she tries to gain sympathy. She’s the same Agatha. She just uses those tactics in different ways.”

The fact that Agatha was earning her own spinoff was delightful news for Hahn: “I just thought I’d get on this ride and say, ‘See you later,'” she says of her “WandaVision” performance. But her mesmerizing take on a mid-level Marvel Comics character was a hit with fans and Marvel executives alike. Getting the call about the show was “like a fever dream,” she says, recalling how she burst into tears when one of the “WandaVision” production assistants wished her well on the first day of filming for “Agatha.”

“This is nothing I would have imagined for myself in the future, in my career, in all of this. And for it to be a witch is beyond my wildest dreams.”

The actress happily dove headfirst into the comic book history of Agatha, a centuries-old character who first appeared in a 1970 issue of “Fantastic Four.” Over the decades, the character has appeared on the page as a mentor or nanny, protector or mother figure. Sometimes she’s an old woman, other times not so much. “There was clearly a point in time when every Marvel hero had to be in a bodysuit with a big cleavage. I thought, ‘Can we bring that Agatha back?!’” Hahn jokes.

Her Agatha ended up being “a crockpot of a lot of different experiences,” she says. There was a little bit of the Tin Man she played in her Cleveland high school production of “The Wizard of Oz” — “Having a little funnel on my head, I felt like I was preparing for that in a way” — and also a heavy infusion of her love of dark comedy. “There’s a lot of freedom in that humor and a little bit of anger behind it, and those are some qualities that I think as women we maybe don’t get to express as loudly and take up as much space,” Hahn says.

She also points to her recent string of leading roles that delve into moral gray areas, from TV shows like “I Love Dick” and “Mrs. Fletcher” to films like “Private Life” and “Afternoon Delight.” “Those female directors (and) writers really wanted my very authentic self.

“I know this sounds cliché, but I really love acting. I’m an old workhorse,” she adds. “It could be a lead, a supporting role, whatever. I don’t have a huge schedule, (but) I enjoyed playing Agatha Harkness. So this was a real treat.”

Contributions: Gary Levin