Gosh, I’m not too sure. I think when the 90s one came out—which I really enjoyed, and I think that was lovely, and it was fun and funny. Nowadays I think we do move everything on a bit, and we like to add the dark and the horror. I just think Sabrina itself is a good story. I love superhero films or TV, and I love things to do with witches and magic. If you do it right and you make sure that it’s grounded in some sort of realism somewhere along the way, you can convince people that a man can fly or a girl can be a witch.

Beyond just witches and magic, this is a story about a young girl being raised by her two aunts. Your 2017 film, Wonder Woman, was similarly female-focused and well received. Do you think audiences have an easier time with female-fronted storytelling when it’s in the context of the supernatural or genre?

It does, and it’s not just horror and witches and superheroes—but even things like Downton Abbey or The Crown. It’s still not our world, is it? It’s still the world that we don’t live in today. I wonder why people like that, just taking us away from today.

Perhaps because today can be very hard to face.

I think so. I do. I do.

There are so many great witch-related properties coming out right now, between Suspiria, the Charmed reboot, and this. What do you think is in the water that makes it a particularly witch-friendly time for stories?

It wasn’t super-long ago when being a witch was taboo and got people killed. Nowadays we are shifting as a world. I like to see shifts that sometimes can take a generation to go through happening quite quickly now. I’ll be watching something like an episode of Friends, and then I'll notice a little story that makes you go, “Gosh, that wasn’t that long ago, and today you wouldn’t be able to do that.” Fat Monica or thinking Chandler is gay.

So in terms of the witch thing—I know [series creator] Roberto [Aguirre-Sacasa] has said this somewhere, that one of our writers is a witch, I don’t know if you know that. I won’t say her name in case that’s something that is not mine to say, but I know that he has said that. All of us on set were like, “Ooh, you are? What can we ask about it? What can we know about it?” It would fascinate and delight. You have places now that you can say who you are and not be worried—not just that someone doesn’t believe you or agree with you, but that someone might hurt you for your beliefs.

Can you tell me a little about your look as Hilda, which seems in many ways lifted right from the comic-book pages?

Angus Strathie, who designed our wardrobe, also did Moulin Rouge!, and you can probably see where these two are alike—so rich and colorful. On set, people often say, “Hilda’s wardrobe is my favorite because it’s so brilliantly mismatched and quite chaotic.” And I said with my hair, “Just let’s not spray it down loads. Let it move, so that with Hilda’s movements and jolliness, the hair moves with it.”

You certainly get to carry a lot of the lightness and humor on this show. What challenges were there with pairing that tone with the darkness elsewhere in the series?

My favorite genre of acting to do is to find comedy in drama. So sometimes I may be accused of trying to find humor where there was none, and sometimes I might have to be reined in: “No, Lucy, this is not the time to do a pratfall. Someone just died.” In my life, I could probably be accused of using humor as a defense mechanism. It’s something that I do. When something really awful has happened, let’s not sit in the space of being incredibly low, because I think it’s going to take longer to heal. So that’s what I find in Hilda.

__You mention Hilda’s jolliness. I think it’s fascinating to see that kind of character—so motherly and kind and funny—given so much actual power in a story. I like how she stands in contrast to Zelda’s more stereotypical brand of witchy power. __

I like it because I don’t think you have to be the stereotype of Cruella de Vil to have power. You can be nice. You can be kind. You can be good. You just aren’t pissed about by people. You have your boundaries. Hilda gets her own way more than we probably think. Sometimes we all see examples of the squeaky wheel that gets the grease—but for a few years now, I’ve really understood what it means to be the person that you want to see.