The young (half) witch taking Hollywood by storm
Surrounded by the iconic neon lights of Times Square, rising star Kiernan Shipka flashes a knowing smile as a huge billboard in the background beams her face to thousands who pass beneath. This selfie perfectly sums up this teenager on the move.
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Surrounded by the iconic neon lights of Times Square, rising star Kiernan Shipka flashes a knowing smile as a huge billboard in the background beams her face to thousands who pass beneath.
Lying on a large pentagram next to a book of spells and sporting a cheeky grin, the advertisement — which is larger than most New York apartments — is spruiking the 18-year-old’s latest television venture, Netflix series The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina.
“Life is weird & amazing,” she wrote alongside the selfie she shared with her half a million Instagram followers earlier this month.
This one picture perfectly portrays the two extremes of this young actor — the artist with enough promise to justify a Times Square billboard and the cheeky teen overjoyed at seeing her face up in lights.
Despite her youth, Shipka is no stranger to the bright lights and stresses of a big television production. She literally grew up on the long-running award-winning Sixties drama Mad Men, playing Sally, the emotionally tortured daughter of Don Draper, the show’s lying, cheating, selfish but always impeccably suited protagonist.
She scored the Mad Men role when she was just eight years old and by the time she had finished, she was 15. She had grown into a young woman in front of millions of eyes across the globe.
Now 18 and still living at home with her parents when not on the set of Sabrina in Vancouver (where the cast, including Aussie Miranda Otto, Disney hearthrob Ross Lynch and veteran British actor Michelle Gomez are filming the show’s second season) Shipka doesn’t attempt to act older than she is and is as enthusiastic about her new role as any teenager should be.
“It was frickin fun, man — it’s quite empowering,” she tells News Corp when asked what it’s like bringing Sabrina to life. “A lot of the time when you’re exercising your power on the show, it just feels very invigorating, especially as a woman.”
The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina is a dark take on the classic Archie comic of the same name. The series, created by Riverdale’s developer, writer and executive producer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, is equal parts horror, drama and comedy, centring on Sabrina, the half-witch who is fighting to establish her own identity despite the forces of the Dark Lord and the Church of Night pushing her to conform.
It is almost the polar opposite of the 1990s comedy Sabrina The Teenage Witch (which was based on an earlier, lighter comic of the same name).
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Shipka is relishing the opportunity of playing a strong “kickass” female character who is multidimensional and has a deep back story.
“It’s amazing to play a character that’s really coming into her own and finding her strength. I find Sabrina to be extremely brave, extremely selfless — she is so kickass and cool,” she says. “At the same time, she’s still got so much to learn and that’s why it’s so fun to play her because she’s equal parts human and witch and that’s an interesting route to go down. Just playing with that duality and making her complex person who’s just figuring things out as she goes in crazy situations is so fun.”
Sabrina is the latest in a series of shows, often produced by cable and streaming services, that are focusing on strong young leads with rich character development. Riverdale, 13 Reasons Why, Stranger Things and Atypical are just a few that have attracted attention over the past couple of years.
Shipka applauds the move and believes content mobility and ease of access is driving the change.
“I think teenagers are consuming so much content that they should be represented and see themselves in a multidimensional light,” she says. “I think that’s only fair, that’s only right.”
She believes Sabrina ticks those boxes and delivers characters that will be relatable to many teenagers and talk to the struggles they might be going through.
“I think it’s really a cool show that is portraying a lot of young characters going through way different things and figuring themselves out,” she says. “It’s really awesome to be a part of a show that feels real in that regard and truthful.”
Aguirre-Sacasa, who is the series showrunner and also Archie Comics’ chief creative officer, says developing that deeper emotional story actually comes before the scares and thrills that are delivered throughout the first season.
“When we’re in the writers’ room we usually talk first about the emotional story — whatever the emotional story is, what’s it about, what’s Sabrina wrestling with, what’s Ambrose wrestling with, what are the aunties wrestling with, what’s Madam Satan wrestling with — then we always have to put it through that filter and ask how is this a horror story then?” he explains.
It’s these emotional and unpredictable character stories that put the series firmly in binge-watch territory, Shipka says.
When reminded that co-star Lynch recently predicted that viewers were going to ‘binge the shit out of this series’, Shipka laughs and agrees wholeheartedly.
“That’s so funny, but he’s right — it just has a very bingeable nature about it, where pretty much at the end of every episode, you want to know what is going to happen,” she says. “Nothing just ties up nice and pretty in a bow. It’s very varied, you’re not going to get the same formula in every episode.”
Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina is now streaming on Netflix