Kathryn Hahn Turned Agatha All Along Into an Accumulation of Her Lifes Work

It’s fitting, then, that 2021 was a big year for Hahn, too. Her performance not only earned her an Emmy nomination (her second at the time, though she’s already picked up another since then for her turn in the limited series Tiny Beautiful Things), but it kicked off what fans lovingly begun to refer to as the Hahnaissance — the period when the world finally seemed to take real notice of Hahn and start giving her the flowers she’d been deserving for years, from her scene-stealing supporting turns in massive comedies like Step Brothers to her emotionally poignant leading roles in indie movies like Afternoon Delight or the envelope-pushing TV series like I Love Dick. Marvel has a massive fanbase, and after getting a taste of what she could do in WandaVision, many quickly flocked to become Hahn fans, too.

But if 2021 was the Hahnaissance, then 2024 is the Age of Hahnlightenment — a new, somehow even bigger era for the actress, who’s started to accumulate an even larger and more passionate audience since the premiere of Agatha All Along last month. Hahn has never been more famous than she is right now, though you wouldn’t know it just from talking to her. She’s as grounded and humble as ever as she Zooms with me from a hotel room on a Saturday afternoon. “It’s bonkers,” she bluntly admits. “I can't even take it in. I really can't even process it. It feels like it's happening to someone else.”

Kathryn Hahn Never Thought She’d Be On-Screen

Perhaps her humility is a Midwestern thing. Hahn is thrilled when I tell her I’m talking to her from my sister’s place in Ohio. “You know I’m from Cleveland Heights!” she excitedly exclaims. Hahn wears her Midwestern pride loud and proud, whether it’s talking about her love for green bean casserole on the red carpet, dishing about her crushes on local Amish boys growing up on Kimmel, or even flying in to sing with the Middle Aged Dad Jam Band last fall.

But her love for her roots goes deeper than food or music, evidenced by the fact she wants to make the women who raised her feel seen and heard with her work. “I love telling those stories,” she says of the flawed heroines who dominate her filmography. “The crunchy, ethically gray women who aren't camera ready, who have messy hair and are not great with their makeup — a lot of these are the women I grew up with. I love that the stories have appealed to audiences of people who are older or young people — especially young women — to be able to see that ‘life after a certain age,’ which always makes me laugh, is as juicy and powerful and even more so than you could possibly imagine. I feel that's something I'm really proud of if I look back at this last chapter.”

Hahn credits much of this to the women she’s worked with behind the scenes, including Jac Schaeffer, Mary Livanos, Laura Donney, Gandja Monteiro, and Rachel Goldberg — and that’s just on Agatha All Along. The rest of her resume boasts names like Tamara Jenkins, Liz Tigelaar, Nicole Holofcener, and many more. “I feel like I have taken for granted how many women I've gotten to work with,” Hahn admits. “I know that there’s still so much to be done, but I take for granted how lucky I've been in the women and the women's storytelling that I've been able to do. I feel like I've kind of grown up along with these stories and these amazing, incredible writers and directors.”

Maybe it’s the Midwestern in her — or maybe the reason she seems so unaffected by her TV star status is because she never thought she’d be one at all. “I always felt like I was not normal growing up,” she reveals. “There was something about me that made me feel like I didn't quite fit in.” However, once she started doing theater, everything started making sense. “I grew up at the Cleveland Playhouse and being in love with that rep company there, and to be able to see them — these great actors who were able to play something one night, another play the other night — that’s what I thought acting was and what I wanted to do with my life. The only thing I ever wanted to do is be an actor.”

She started making it happen for herself, earning a BA in theater from Northwestern University — where she met her husband, Ethan Sandler — before getting her MFA at Yale, a prestigious program that counts Angela Bassett, Sigourney Weaver, Paul Giamatti, Lupita Nyong'o, and Meryl Streep among its alums. But she faced a crossroads in 2001 when Hollywood came knocking for her first TV role (minus a childhood turn in Hickory Hideout), a series regular in Crossing Jordan, and she had to choose whether to remain in New York and keep following her dreams onstage or take the leap and go to Los Angeles to try something new. She ultimately chose the latter, though it wasn’t all smooth sailing.

“I think there was a gnarly, uncomfortable moment where I had to work through trying to be what I thought everyone wanted me to be, to showing up with my true self, unapologetically. For the first couple of jobs, I really was trying to be a good student,” Hahn muses, confessing that her Catholic school upbringing could very well have something to do with that. “To feel a little bit more reckless and abandon and fearless — that leap, when that finally happened, was like something clicked in me as a human being as well as a performer. For some people, they come right out of the womb with that. For me, it definitely took a second. Obviously, we all are works in progress, but at least on camera, to be able to feel that comfortable took a long time. A long time.”

While it may have taken her a moment to find that sweet spot, now that she has, she’s never leaving. “I think that's my favorite place to be as an actor — in that reckless place of abandon,” she says. Because while her upbringing inspires her work in many ways, her work also acts as a catharsis from elements of it, giving her an outlet to showcase and process the messier, more complicated feelings of life. Acting, she says, is something that feels “anarchic” and asks her to show up as her most truthful self. “Being able to be this emotional felt very exotic to me when one is not, maybe, supposed to show all of those emotions or let your inside on the outside. As a Catholic kid growing up in the Midwest, there are certain expectations put on one that don't allow for all of that.”

‘Agatha All Along’ Is an “Accumulation” of Hahn’s Body of Work

After making the move to Hollywood, Hahn still carries the lessons theater instilled in her, especially when it comes to work ethic. “I pick up my costumes, I’m in control of my props — I’m very self-sufficient on set.” That’s just one of the many reasons she relates to Agatha Harkess, who she describes as “an old-school performer” who loves acting and is reminiscent of the rep company members she grew up around. “I think that she is a ham. I think that she loves performing so much that I felt a very kindred spirit with her. There's something on the inside that's burning all the time — that we all can identify with — that sometimes her bravado is covering up.”

But there’s more to Agatha than that bravado — a lot more. It’s a demanding part, asking Hahn to flex her dramatic and comedic muscles alike, sometimes in the span of just a few seconds. How does she do that, I wonder — go someplace so dark and emotional only to snap back or spit out a witty quip a moment later? I get a bashful smile in response. “I don't know what is wrong with me,” she says before giving credit to creator Schaeffer and her team. (This is something that happens a lot — Hahn using a compliment to heap praise on the hundreds of other people who worked on the show.) “It's in the writing, and there is that thrill of being able to let go completely and trust in that jumping off of a cliff that you'll have a soft landing. As soon as you jump off, you don't know where it's gonna go or how it's gonna look, and you can't think about anything — you just have to jump into the abyss. That flow that happens when everyone is invested in it on the set and the writing is so good — it's that sparkly feeling where it's limbic that you have to trust. I’m an actor that everything is about the director. That relationship is so paramount. You have to really trust because you're really taking a lot of risks.”

But Hahn is quick to offer perspective. “Not real risks,” she clarifies after a beat. “We know what real risks are. But emotionally, to be able to hurl yourself into something… it's a weird job. I mean, this is all so hilariously relative. We talk about the stakes or whatever, but we all know what that is. It's an interesting business.”

There’s been a (frankly understandable) trend of Marvel stars who have begun to get frustrated by being most known for their superhero role, but Hahn doesn’t see it that way. When I share that this part feels like a culmination of everything she’s done in her career, from the large comedic beats to the grounded emotional ones, she agrees wholeheartedly. “I would joke around in the hair and makeup trailer at the end of this shoot saying, ‘Well, this is my last acting job.’ Because I feel like Jac Schaeffer gave me an opportunity to do everything in one part. It was such a celebration of what I love and why I got into this business in the first place — that feeling of being able to shapeshift and that rep company feeling that I was talking about before. That's the dreamiest for me as a performer. So I do feel it was like a combination of everything I've done before. It feels very right.”

Hahn goes on to say that there’s something magical about the timing of it all, too. “I don’t know what that says about me, but it feels very right that I'm playing a witch right now. I feel very close to Agatha, especially at this particular moment in my life… it feels like an accumulation. I couldn't have played her a decade ago. If I look at the book of my life, she's like on the spine — I'm hoping in the middle.” Not only does Hahn relate to Agatha, but she also finds her confidence inspiring. “I wish I had that powerful feeling of being able to feel like I'm 12 feet tall every time I walk into a room and feel that sense of self. There's something aspirational about her, too, that I feel has met me at a perfect time in my life.”

How Did Hahn Fully Embody Agatha Harkness? The Secret’s in the Corset

Speaking of being 12 feet tall, I note Hahn’s posture seems to change whenever she talks about getting into the role, almost as if she’s subconsciously pulling her shoulders back and raising her chin — something Agatha often does. In addition to being emotionally challenging, there’s a sneaky physical demand, too, not just in the knife fights and broom flights but in the way Agatha walks, sits, and even breathes. It’s remarkable, really, how Hahn carries herself completely differently, seeming to have the mannerisms woven into her DNA. Hahn credits the comics with helping her develop this. “Traditionally, she's shown much older with this fabulous gray hair up, this Edwardian look with the corset, and there's hardly any skin showing. That's my favorite Agatha,” Hahn gushes. “There are definitely Agathas in which she’s in the bustier with just a strip of gray, which is fantastic, but I love the Agatha that's very 'from another era.'”

Hahn also shouts out her movement coach, whom Elizabeth Olsen originally hooked her up with back on WandaVision to help differentiate their magical hand movements (“her is chaos magic; mine was learned — it was important for us to develop our own vocabulary”), as well as costume designer Daniel Selon for helping her take Agatha to new physical places. “He’s incredible. He was the assistant for WandaVision, so he's really baked into Agatha as well. The costumes really helped. There was something in the corset. Those things, as an actor, just kind of inform you of who this part is.”

Hahn reveals that her favorite of the many, many iconic looks she’s gotten to don for Agatha has to be the ‘80s Agnes from WandaVision, which she got to briefly revisit in the Agatha All Along pilot’s morgue scene, calling out the permed wig as the one she most cherishes. On a more personal note, however, the purple coat we see in Agatha All Along holds a special place in her heart. “That coat was made with so much love by so many hands, and you could feel it when you put it on — how many hands were on it, how much power was in this garment. There were hand-drawn runes on the silk on the inside — protection ruins. It really did feel like a sacred garment.” Viewers will often see Agatha dramatically flipping the coat like a cape as she turns, which is no accident. “That was definitely for Daniel and for those amazing seamstresses that worked on it,” Hahn admits. “I was like, ‘I gotta give him a twirl because this is too good.’”

The transition from WandaVision to Agatha All Along feels seamless because of people like Hahn, Selon, and Schaeffer — crew who worked on both. Fans are already picking up on moments and Easter eggs from WandaVision that seem to potentially foreshadow Agatha’s journey on the Witches’ Road. “I think it’s almost in reverse that they speak to each other,” Hahn says of the relationship between the two shows. “Jac Schaeffer is also a witch, so she was able to look back and answer a lot of those questions or bridge between the two in ways that we could never have anticipated because this was never supposed to happen,” she notes with a laugh. “WandaVision felt so experimental and juicy in a way that I hadn't seen before… this feels, to me, like a continuation and an extension of that.”

The beginning of Agatha All Along even sees Hahn playing Agnes again — but with a twist. As Teen (Joe Locke) and Rio (Aubrey Plaza) begin to puncture holes in Wanda’s spell, the character becomes trapped in a crime series, wherein she has to solve the mystery of what happened to her and become herself again. The small flickers of recognition of her face — where things begin to seem familiar for some reason — feel as suspenseful and thrilling as the biggest Avengers fight. In typical Hahn fashion, she makes it look easy, though it’s anything but. She’s playing a character who’s brainwashed into being a different character — one who doesn’t even know who she is.

It’s a unique acting exercise, to be sure, though it’s one that Hahn welcomed. “It was such a fun challenge to play. That was really fun, to be able to see the light through the spell, and when it lifts and when it shuts, and when it starts to feel opaque between the two worlds. When it starts to really, really fall apart was really fun. Because you do feel like, ‘What is reality?’ at that point. Everything is a prism all of a sudden. I think that's why it was so important for us to have her run out naked — because she's so feral. She doesn't know if she's a human being. She doesn't know what is going on. I feel like, to start at that place is also a really great way to start a character arc.”

Kathryn Hahn Has No Interest in Being a Solo Act

Hahn’s first real leading role came around a decade ago in Joey Soloway’s 2013 indie Afternoon Delight as a frustrated stay-at-home mom who forms a complicated bond with a local stripper (Juno Temple). Since then, Hahn has consistently been #1 on the call sheet — particularly in the TV space — in critically acclaimed series like Mrs. Fletcher and Tiny Beautiful Things. I ask if how she views that role has changed over the years — if the pressure to lead has gotten less or more intense. She thinks for a moment. “I think because most of my career has been ‘supporting,’ in all the ways that means, weirdly, it doesn't feel different to me. There's the same humility and the same walking into the unknown and the same ‘I don't know what I'm doing’ for the first couple of days. It's always like, ‘Why am I doing this?’ That'll never go away.”

Despite the inherent insecurity that comes with taking on a new role, Hahn thrives on it — particularly the chance to collaborate with her peers. “If anything, I just love an ensemble. No one can do it by themselves. [When I’m the lead,] I feel like I work a little extra hard on making an ensemble feel cohesive and comfortable because I think that the best work happens when you are the least tense, when you're the most open, and when you feel the most confident. I know from experience. If I'm ever working with an amazing young actor, I know how important that is — to feel really confident and to feel really safe with the person. The feeling that you can do anything. Because it only makes the scene better.” There’s a beat. “But I’ll tell you — Joe Locke? Didn’t have to do any of that.”

The relationship between Agatha and Locke’s character, known initially as Teen and then revealed to be Wanda’s son, Billy Maximoff, is a complicated one. At times, Agatha seems oddly maternal towards him, watching over him while he’s injured and offering to be a mentor. At others, she’s condescendingly calling him her pet and growling about how he’s just like his mother. While Locke’s character originally seems like a fanboy, he eventually stands up to Agatha, and the two go toe-to-toe. Hahn recalls him bringing that fiery attitude even during the audition process. “He is so good. He's so good. I remember, when we had our chemistry read, I was legitimately like off my game a little bit. He definitely kept me on my heels. I was not expecting this beautiful human to have such power and such beautiful eyeballs. Our chemistry was so rad right off the bat. I love him. I love him.”

Still, Hahn frequently finds herself working alongside young actors besides Locke, as motherhood is a recurring theme in her filmography. Bad Moms and even Step Brothers irreverently showcase the grind it can bring; Afternoon Delight and Mrs. Fletcher see her character attempt to carve out an identity separate from her children; Tiny Beautiful Things tackles how immense loss and grief can influence being a mom; and Private Life depicts the struggle some women face on their journey to becoming a mother at all. Each project looks at the subject with an approach that feels radical and nuanced, and Agatha All Along is no exception. We discover in the pilot that Agatha lost a son, Nicholas Scratch — something that deeply informs her character and relationship with Billy. To make matters more complicated, there are rumors that she’s the one who killed Nicholas in exchange for the Darkhold.

When I ask Hahn how she views motherhood in her newest project, she has to consider it for a moment. “That's an interesting one. Even in WandaVision, there could be a maternal quality of her to the Scarlet Witch. In the comics, we see Agatha as a mentor, as a sister, as a rival, as a mother, as a nanny, so that's all baked into this witch. I think that there is something lacking that she is longing for. And that could be a connection with other witches, but there is definitely a hole. And that could be filled with many things.” Without missing a beat, she recognizes the filthy elephant she’s put in the room. “I don't mean to make it a dirty pun,” she flippantly says. “But I also think she does have a soft spot for certain beings for sure.”

That soft spot shows itself even in the most unexpected places, like when we discover that Agatha spared the young children when she killed her coven — a coven that tried to kill her first and was led by her mother, Evanora. In Episode 5, we discover via Evanora’s ghost that she has viewed Agatha as evil since she was born and regrets not murdering her as a baby. “Yeah, mother-daughters,” Hahn quips. “Light backstory to work with.” Turning more serious, Hahn reveals that this trauma was paramount to helping her understand the character. “There's big, big feelings and big stakes already in there. I understood her bravado and her masking and her layers on top of it — her shell that's centuries old. Who can get in there, and who can't, and why? It's kind of like the spell at the beginning of the show. It feels like she's underneath her own protection spell.” I’m visibly impressed by that analogy, and she grins. “Ohh, I just came up with that!” she proudly declares.

Because motherhood is such a theme in Hahn’s work, it makes sense that she likens the experience of putting this show into the world to giving birth. “We were in this bubble of making this show that we were so proud of — I was so proud of this show — but it's like your baby. It feels so vulnerable once she's born. And this, especially, felt like we were in labor for a real long time before we delivered. It always feels very vulnerable to have your baby out in the world, but the response has been so thrilling for all of us. I mean, our text chain is just… we're so excited by it. I think the thing that's most surprising to me, and most moving to me, is that it feels like it’s been able to be appealing to so many different humans that it just makes me hopeful. We were wondering, like, ‘Who is gonna be more interested in watching it?’ And it seems to be such a broad spectrum. We knew we were this show of all women over 40 and this beautiful queer young man — we knew how special it was and that it was exactly what the show needed to be, but we didn't, of course, know how it was going to be received. So the fact that it was so moving to so many people and that so many people have connected to it or dig it is really exciting.”

I wanted to know, then, what is Hahn connecting with? What is she digging? When I spoke to her last year around this time after her Emmy nomination, she noted that some of her favorite performances of the year included Rachel Weisz in Dead Ringers, Elizabeth Debicki in The Crown, Jessica Chastain in George & Tammy, and Aubrey Plaza in The White Lotus. When I pose that question again this year, Hahn remembers the late Gena Rowlands, who she calls a “north star,” noting how many of her roles explored the “gnarly complications of being a woman” — something that can certainly be said of her career as well. “I had to go on a deep dive again — because she's my favorite of all time — and just remember her incredible contributions to film and actors.”

Hahn also calls German actress Sandra Hüller, who starred in two Oscar-nominated films last year, Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest, a new favorite. “I've just been reading about her nonstop — her work as an actress and as a theater actor — and she really blows my mind. Stunned by her.” There’s also a repeat name from last year in her Agatha All Along co-star Aubrey Plaza, who has had two film projects come out at the same time as the show was airing, My Old Ass and Megalopolis. “I adore her. I feel like this chapter of hers has been so exciting to watch.”

Kathryn Hahn Couldn’t Be Prouder of ‘Agatha All Along’s Queer Storytelling

Plaza and Hahn both appeared on Parks and Recreation, in which Plaza played deadpan intern April Ludgate throughout the show’s run, while Hahn recurred as blunt political strategist Jennifer Barkley starting in the show’s fourth season. Despite this, their characters didn’t really cross paths, making it so Agatha All Along was the first time the longtime friends got to work together. Hahn describes the relationship between Agatha and Rio as “centuries-old and very complicated. There's clearly a history there.”

To the delight of fans everywhere, their history is revealed early on to be of the romantic variety. The pilot episode sees the two engaging in a living room brawl crackling with chemistry, with death threats and innuendos flung about in equal measure — sometimes simultaneously. Hahn divulges that to achieve this, she and Plaza kept their distance until it was time to film. “We kind of kept to our corners. We just unconsciously waited for those scenes so it felt super-charged in a way that was thrilling, but we couldn't have anticipated it. I think if we had tried to talk through anything, it would have been dead theater. We talked a lot before — we hung out before it started — but then, once we started shooting, we didn't really hang out.”

That tension and passion continue throughout the show, with steamier and softer scenes alike fleshing out this unique dynamic that’s both toxic and intoxicating. There’s a complexity and authenticity there that feels rare, especially for sapphic relationships, which has attracted legions of fans who may not have been familiar with the MCU before this. “The fact that people who don't know Marvel at all, that this could be their way into that world, is so exciting to me,” Hahn says. “I'm just so proud that it exists, and I'm so proud that it exists for audiences that maybe haven't seen themselves in the MCU. It's thrilling that there are so many queer people in it and that that’s kind of almost beside the point — people are just interested in the story. It feels like exactly where we should be right now.”

While Hahn and Plaza didn’t hang out much, they sent each other poems and songs relating to their characters to prepare. When I press for details, Hahn pulls up the top of her shirt to cover her mouth. “There’s a lot… maybe we'll have to come out with some of those songs and some of that playlist. There definitely was one between us and the producer that we kept adding to as the show went on. Maybe one day we'll have to.” She tugs on her collar, fanning herself. “I'm getting sweaty thinking about it because I don't want to spill anything, but there are some really fab songs.”

She might not be able to reveal much about that just yet, but she does share a funny anecdote about talking to Plaza regarding a film that's not on their character mood boards. “I remember once, I was like, ‘Have you seen Fire of Love, that documentary about the two volcanologists?’ I remember she said she was looking at it and trying to find clues, and I was like, “Oh, no — I just thought it was a good movie,” she says with a laugh.

Hahn has also been more forthcoming about the music that has gotten her into character, including Florence & the Machine and Bjork. “She really was a way in,” Hahn says of the latter. “Just thinking of her. Talk about volcanic rocks….just the best. What a witch.” Considering Agatha is 350 years old, I’m curious as to what Hahn thinks she listens to. She ponders this thoughtfully. “I think she loves a really long Wagner,” she finally decides. “A long opera. And then, I think that she also loves a pop song. I think she would love a rave. I think she would be really fun to dance with — she would definitely be dancing by herself, though. And I think that she loves a chant. She loves old little ditties that mean something to maybe some old guys, but she's kind of taken them over and made them her own. And I think she loves anything that's practical — any sort of wailing in the woods with a fire going. I think she would love Eurovision. I think Eurovision, she would be in the front row.”

What’s Next for Kathryn Hahn?

While Hahn certainly loves a concert here and there, her lifestyle is overall a bit more lowkey than Agatha’s. “I would say I'm an introverted extrovert…or extroverted introvert — whatever it is,” Hahn divulges. “I like to be by myself. It's very hard for me to sometimes leave the house and my little family and my beautiful life with my dogs and my cats and my kids.”

Despite her homebody tendencies, Hahn has been getting out a lot lately, even taking on a three-night guest-hosting stint this summer for Jimmy Kimmel Live! Hahn was an instant pro, but there were those same butterflies that are present every time she steps onto a set. “That was another challenge that I never could have seen coming. When they asked me, I was like, ‘Yes.’ And then, the next day I was like, ‘Why did I say that?’ And I was terrified. But then, I was like, ‘All right — I'm just going to fling myself into this. What's the worst that can happen?’ Again, priorities and stakes.”

Hahn praises Kimmel’s team for welcoming her so she felt comfortable from the start and says she attempted to send that same positive energy to the guests she was tasked with interviewing. “I had so much empathy for us as interviewees. It is legitimately terrifying, and there are people who are really, really good at it. I think I just tried to send love beams to whoever was on the chair just to be like, ‘I know, I know.’” Beyond Kimmel’s team, she also reveals she found inspiration in an unlikely source — Agatha Harkness herself. “It felt like another extension of Agatha, in a weird way. It felt like something that she would do, and she would be able to slip in totally seamlessly. Definitely, there was some Agatha in there.”

The music training she got for Agatha All Along certainly came in handy. Hahn lights up when I reveal I was in the audience the night she sang the entire history of the MCU. “That was so fun!” she exclaims. It’s a challenging song made even more challenging by the fact she had to sing it in front of a live audience, likely without much time to prep, but the biggest obstacle for Hahn? Her eyesight. “I was just hoping that I could see the teleprompter because I didn't have my glasses on, and she's going blind.”

After Agatha All Along’s finale, fans hopefully won’t have to wait too long until they get to see Hahn again, as she wrapped filming on Seth Rogen’s Apple TV+ comedy series The Studio this summer. When I mention the project, Hahn throws her head back and laughs. “The Studio is so freaking fun and a big other swing. It felt very familiar to me. It harkened back to when I was doing comedies back in my 30s and that genre. It was kind of great — after this huge, different, and incredibly fulfilling chapter of the witch — to be able to go back to that and be supporting and to be with those guys. I mean, Catherine O’Hara is a goddess — a goddess.”

Last year, I asked Hahn what she took from her previous character, Clare in Tiny Beautiful Things, to prepare for Agatha. I pose the question again, asking what she took from Agatha to get into that role. “Maybe her unawareness,” Hahn says. “And also her ability to take over a room. She just enters a room, and all the walls are just filled with her energy. Her not giving a shit is what I think I took.” There’s a beat as she realizes she made it an impressive 38 minutes without cursing. “First time I swore in this interview,” she recognizes. “That’s good for me. Usually, it would’ve happened a long time ago.” I suggest maybe it’s because we’d been talking about Catholic school. “Yes.” She nods gravely. “There could be a nun listening.”

As far as what she physically took? A lit mushroom from the Witches’ Road set and a picture from Agnes’ house. “[It’s] this very Victorian photograph in a frame — black-and-white, like sepia — of a woman reclining… it just felt so opposite of what you picture a Victorian woman to be. She was unloosened, and the way she was looking directly in the lens was just like, ‘I dare you.’ That I took because I thought it was so rad. I hope it was a copy. If not, sorry.” She’s excited for eagle-eyed fans to try and spot it — along with all of the details that will become meaningful after the entire show is out. “Agnes' house was so witchy, and there are so many Easter eggs in there. I can't wait for people to see that again after watching the whole show. There are so many little things that pay off later.”

You can’t blame Hahn for resorting to some petty theft here and there. “Surprisingly, I have not gotten that much merch,” she reveals. “I bought my own Lego figure! I bought it for myself, and then I put it together, and it's on this ledge. That was a real special moment that I didn't see in my future when I was starting out and very cool to my kids. I wish they had been younger because seeing Mom as a Lego figure would have been very cool — it still is. But yeah, it's bonkers.”

Still, the fact she’s not getting truckloads of Agatha swag feels wrong. I suggest that we should write to someone about that so they can hook her up. “Yeah,” Hahn agrees. “At the end of this interview, be like, ‘Marvel…Disney…give this woman some merch.’”

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+.

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