‘Agatha All Along’ Showrunner Breaks Down That Premiere Episode: True Crime, Sexual Tension and Mr. Scratchy

Note: The following article contains “Agatha All Along” spoilers for the premiere episode.

“Agatha All Along” is here and bringing a whole lot of witchiness to the MCU. But the premiere episode also brought several questions with it.

Now streaming on Disney+, the new series picks up three years after the events of “WandaVision,” back in Westview. Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) is long gone (then again, is she?) but Agatha Harkness is still there, trapped in Wanda’s spell.

When we find her again, she believes she’s Agnes O’Connor, a grizzled detective in the vein of Kate Winslet’s character from “Mare of Easttown” (like “WandaVision” emulated different sitcoms in each episode, the first episode of “Agatha” is mostly one giant homage to the Emmy-winning HBO series). But an old colleague in the form of Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) and a mysterious newcomer (Joe Locke) are determined to break her free.

When they succeed, Agatha realizes exactly who she is and how much power she no longer has — and who’s after her now. There’s a whole lot going on in this series, so TheWrap sat down with showrunner Jac Schaeffer to dig into the premiere episode in full.

And check back for our weekly interviews with Schaeffer all throughout “Agatha All Along” as we get the skinny on each episode.

You direct the first two episodes. And you haven’t directed TV before! You’ve done a couple shorts, and you did a film in 2009. So what brought you to this decision of wanting to also direct some of “Agatha?”

Well, directing is the thing that I always wanted to do. That was the goal, that was the Holy Grail for me, starting when I was young. Like, I think I sort of announced it at around 14. And just, you know, the way the industry is, and the way lives and paths go, it was easier to win jobs as a writer than it was to win jobs as a director. It was always the goal to get back in the director’s chair. And this was my opportunity, lucky for me.

And obviously you created “WandaVision,” which this is a direct spinoff of. What did you want to establish with these first two episodes?

So, it was always the design that [“Agatha”] would start with this true crime episode. That was an idea that I had when I pitched “WandaVision.” It was going to be the eighth episode of “WandaVision,” that was going to be like a “CSI” episode, and she was going to be solving the murder of Pietro. He was the one on the slab.

I’m sorry, that just broke me a little bit.

(Laughs). But it was her way, sort of like, to break out of what was going on, and for her to, like, fully understand what’s going on. And I mean, that was a cool idea. But once we got in the writer’s room and really started putting that together, it was clear that we needed to have discipline in our approach to “WandaVision.”

Even early, we had a lot of different sitcoms. We had workplace sitcoms and we looked briefly at sort of like socially political sitcoms, and we were like, “No, it is aspirational family sitcoms only.” And I think that’s one of the reasons we were successful, is because we were like, “Our focus goes like this.” So “CSI” fell away, and I always tucked it in my back pocket.

And then, just between “WandaVision” and “Agatha,” there was a surge in prestige, true crime drama series, and so it sort of morphed in my head into being that, as opposed to like a network procedural.

So in thinking about what I was going to direct, I knew that the pilot was going to be this kind of misdirect. It was going to be, you know, a nod to “WandaVision.” It was going to be a fully realized tribute to that story, that type of filmmaking, and that the second episode would be the actual pilot proper. That would be the table setting.

So that was why I decided I wanted to direct those two, is because we would do this, misdirect, and then we would be like, “But this is our real show.” And we also felt, you know, “WandaVision” had three episodes before we cracked things open. Fans are smart, and they devoured “WandaVision” so fully that we were like, “We can’t just redo the same thing.” So, as soon as we get out of true crime, we’re going to let the audience know what we’re doing.

So why specifically “Mare of Easttown?” Is it because of the Kate Winslet of it all and the intense female lead there?

Yeah! It’s several things. First there was sort of the wink and the nod to, when we were on the award circuit, we were doing it with the “Mare of Easttown” team. And I’m friendly with Brad [Ingelsby, the creator], and really admire them. And Evan Peters [who played Ralph Bohner in “WandaVision”] is in that show, so there was a funny sort of intersection that was so fabulous. So that was part of the sort of texture of it.

But it’s not just “Mare of Easttown.” It is “The Killing.” It is “Destroyer” with Nicole Kidman. Like, it is the Grizzled Lady Cop. And there are two reasons for that. One is that, in “WandaVision,” we were like, what is Wanda’s internal life? And she wanted this, like, cozy, happy family world to surround herself in. And we were like, “What is Agatha? Where would Agatha be if she had her own hex?” And so it was this.

What really charmed me about it was the idea that, first, Agatha would be sort of grittier and more in the drama space and more in the murder-y space. But really, the true crime fixation that we have culturally, she would be like, “I see you. I see your darkness.” Do you know what I mean? She would delight in being like “All you people working your 9-to-5’s, and having your 2.5 kids, and being good people. And then at night you watch murder shows.” She’s like, “You’re dark inside, just like I’m dark inside, and I see it.”

So that was the real pathos of it. And then, just the thing of the trope of a woman who’s smart and great at her job and like, messy in her personal life, is correct for Agatha.

Having Aubrey Plaza call that out when she brings her the pizza, I loved that. And you stuck with cheesy cop lines like “Eat my ass chief.” But Kathryn was also trope-y as Agnes the nosy neighbor in “WandaVision,” so I enjoyed those parallels.

Yeah I mean if I could have Kathryn play every trope, I would. She just like, slips inside of that skin and does that very special thing where it is a send-up — it’s like a critique and a tribute at the same time. And that’s what I love in in my content.

All right, we need to get into the Wanda of it all. Last time you and I spoke, I floated a theory that the Scarlet Witch is dead but Wanda is still alive. “Agatha” goes so out of its way to not show Jane Doe’s face. You show the blackened fingers, you say the blunt force trauma, all of the indications are there that it is Wanda, post-“Doctor Strange 2.” But then you give Kathryn Hahn this really cheeky line where she’s like, “You never know.” Talk to me about this. Did you intentionally play this out give fans a little hope? Or can you actually say “Yeah, she gone. Marvel told me that she’s gone gone.”

I mean, I can’t speak to characters beyond the scope of my show. But yeah, I think in addition to sending up the tropes in other corners of pop culture, I also do enjoy sending up the tropes of Marvel, which is, like, “Is anyone really ever dead?” So I would say that that particular line, I think, is a bit of a nod to that. That is the truth in the MCU as well.

I just want her to be alive.

I think it’s safe to say everyone wants that. She is incredible. Character’s incredible, Lizzie’s incredible, yes. Everybody wants her. But, yeah, I can’t — I literally don’t know anything, and can’t speak to things beyond the show.

Well, another thing in your show I also want to get into with this first episode is the Aubrey Plaza and Kathryn Hahn of it all. The tension, the chemistry — and it’s sexual tension first and foremost — that you build between them. And it’s from the jump. I want to know how those conversations went with Marvel. Was it a “Let’s see how much we can get away with?”

Well first, in terms of the execution of it — I mean, OK. It is on the page. Like it is on the page that there is crackling chemistry between the two of them. It was a conversation with Marvel in so much as it’s about the history of these two characters, and that is a conversation about Agatha’s character. And we peel back layers as we move through the show. So that’s the conversation is like, what is the history that we’re we’re going to be portraying?

As far as their actual chemistry on set, I mean, I was directing that episode, and I had to do so little. Aubrey signed up because she wanted to work with Kathryn. Both of them were so raring to go. They were sort of like horses, you know? Like there was a palpable thing that they just wanted to be let loose. And that seemed particularly, like, where they’re in Agnes’ house and Agatha is on the couch and Rio’s in the chair.

I don’t normally do this, but it was almost like Aubrey wanted it; I started giving Aubrey direction that Kathryn couldn’t hear. Like, intentionally, I was sort of whispering things. I am an above board director, but there was something that like, it was all so intimate. I would get really close to Aubrey, and it was a very quiet set, and their physicality is so great, that I started doing that.

And it seemed to kind of help with what Aubrey was doing, because everything they’re saying is coded, you know what I mean? And you feel that. So it was, yeah, we just super leaned into it. It was so combustible from the beginning.

Jac, you had me and at least two of my coworkers blushing during the first battle when Kathryn goes “Don’t you want me–” and Aubrey cuts in with “horizontal? In a grave?” She didn’t mean in a grave, I see you.

(Laughs)

That’s so much more explicit than usual. So, when you talk about not having to do much, was there anything that you maybe wanted to pull back? How did you decide how much tension to create in this first episode?

We did not pull any of it back, I will say. So like in the office scene, when Rio says, “If you want to be in control, you can be.” That’s Aubrey. A smart actor is going to see the opportunity for the subtext there. But Aubrey is the one taking that inhale, and resting for a pause. And then editor, Jamie Gross and I were like, “That’s the take. That’s the only take we’re using.” That take where she’s, like, in her body.

And the other thing that I find bewitching, to use a word I use a lot, about it is the effect it has on Agatha. It puts her on the back foot, and that’s what we want in this episode, is Agatha is not in her right mind, and so Rio is poking at her in myriad ways. But one of them is this sexual tension. And also it sort of speaks to that Agatha’s character is not comfortable being emotionally vulnerable. You know, that is accurate. It’s what it brings out in our protagonist is kind of what I’m always after.

But no, Aubrey played it so well, and then Kathryn was doing this sort of like walled off Lady Cop thing. And it was like, the least amount of work I did was on their chemistry.

Have you seen the sound byte going around of Aubrey on the carpet at the premiere, where they’re saying it’s the gayest Marvel project yet, and she was like, “I hope so. That’s what I signed up for.” Have you seen this?

(laughs) No, did she say that?!

It’s going everywhere.

Oh my God, she’s an agent of chaos. She’s amazing. Yeah. I mean, it is. We were like, “It’s you, opposite Kathryn in all of the ways.” And she was like, “Great.”

So good. OK, as we get to the end of this episode, we see the return of Agatha’s rabbit in her basement. We also see her go into her son’s room, Nicholas Scratch. The prevailing theory during “WandaVision” times was that Señor Scratchy, the bunny, was Nicholas Scratch her son. Are we going down this road a little bit more in Agatha?

What I would say is that there’s a lot in the pilot to examine. It feels a little bit like a trick, and like something that we do and then we move on. But it is worth a viewer’s time to pay attention to what they’re seeing in the pilot.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

“Agatha All Along” is now streaming on Disney+. TheWrap will have a new deep dive with Schaeffer for each episode the following Monday. You can check out our deep dive on episode two here.

The post ‘Agatha All Along’ Showrunner Breaks Down That Premiere Episode: True Crime, Sexual Tension and Mr. Scratchy appeared first on TheWrap.