If you’re a little freaked out by what happens in Netflix’s new horror series “The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina,” you’re not alone. Star Tati Gabrielle, who plays Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka)’s nemesis Prudence, says that some of those bewitching scenes were “genuinely terrifying” to shoot.
Gabrielle, although she plays a witch on “Sabrina,” is self-described as being “horrible when it comes to horror things.” Just how horrible? “Like, ‘Jurassic Park’s not even a horror film and I couldn’t even watch it until I was 16 just because I was so terrified,” she told TheWrap ahead of the show’s release on Netflix.
Of all the crazy scenes in “Sabrina” (we won’t go into much detail to avoid spoilers), Gabrielle said the craziest to film was a ritual scene with her fellow Weird Sister, Agatha (Adeline Rudolph). “It gave me literal chills,” “The 100” alum said, adding that “a lot of the spells and things that we do are actually real spells that they’ve pulled from, like, the Wiccan faith.”
“It was kind of, like, wild to, yeah, be in like a literal ritual with real symbols everywhere and real spells happening,” she said.
Luckily, however, using real-life spells didn’t cause any real-life problems for the cast and crew.
“We’ve never had like ‘Exorcist’-type incidents or like weird things happening around the set, like thank God,” Gabrielle continued, though she did say that walking through the Spellman house by herself creeped her out. “If I have to cross through one [set] to get to another, and I’m by myself, I will literally, like, run, terrified, like through the set and to the next one.”
Thankfully, Gabrielle worked out a good palette cleanser for those super-scary scenes: “Some of those nights, I would go home and watch ‘Family Guy’ for a bit,” she said. “And just kind of decompress, get back on the lighter side of life. [I’d tell myself] ‘It’s not real, it’s not real, you’re gonna be fine!’”
So who was the bravest on the spooky set? Fittingly, the series’ titular star.
“Well Kiernan [Shipka] is like, the hardest person to scare,” Gabrielle said. Case in point: In Season 1’s opening scene, Sabrina and Harvey (Ross Lynch) are watching an old horror movie, and Sabrina is laughing and eating popcorn while everyone around her is visibly scared. “That is literally Kiernan.”
“Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” Season 1 is now streaming on Netflix.