The secret’s out. Agnes, the meddling neighbor played by Kathryn Hahn on “WandaVision,” Marvel’s first Disney+ show, is more than she appears. “WandaVision” stars Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen as Vision and Wanda, two superheroes who have mysteriously taken up residence in a TV genre: the family sitcom. Each episode lovingly spoofs a different decade, riffing on “Bewitched” or “Malcolm in the Middle”; meanwhile, darkness seeps in from the outside world. In the seventh episode, Agnes reveals that her real name is Agatha Harkness, and that she’s a centuries-old witch whose magic manifests as a sparkling amethyst fog. (Her wisecracking, though, wasn’t an act: “I did not break your rules,” Agatha smirks. “They simply bent to my power.”)
The secret about Kathryn Hahn is also out, and has been for a while. Hahn, who got her start in fratty fare—“Step Brothers,” “Anchorman”—that showcased her comedic genius, has, for the past several years, been exploring more nuanced roles. After her turns in batch-craft series such as “Transparent,” “Mrs. Fletcher,” and “I Love Dick,” the critic Inkoo Kang declared her the “patron saint of sexed up middle-aged women.” Vulture concurred: “No longer can we ignore that Kathryn Hahn is, and has always been, one of our great screen presences.” Hahn’s superpower is a glowing kind of warmth; her funny, vulnerable characters always seem to be running a bit of a temperature. That heat—a by-product, the viewer imagines, of a restless inner life—radiates from Agatha, too, whose importance to “WandaVision,” in a sort of career reversal for Hahn, was at first semaphored precisely by the fact that Kathryn Hahn was playing her.
On a recent Zoom call, Hahn admitted that she gets “nervous, totally self-conscious” in interviews. “I always feel like it’s just a word salad coming out,” she said. Now forty-seven, the actor projects as friendly and thoughtful, especially about her work. But it’s true that, with her subtle, flexible face and tractor-beam charisma, she can be hyper-expressive even without communicating verbally—a quality that helps explain the simultaneous privacy and openness of her performances. We chatted about soporific sitcoms, the strangeness of pandemic celebrity, and taking the plunge into the Marvel universe. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
It’s such a joy to watch you in “WandaVision,” in part because your character, Agatha, seems to contain little bits and pieces of other roles you’ve played.
I didn’t consciously—it’s never conscious. But there was definitely a sense of total freedom with this part. I felt a real surrender in just taking the big swing of it, which was so, so fun. I mean, I’m kind of a newbie to this world. I don’t know very much about Marvel. But, when I was pitched this story, I was so taken by the ambition of it. And the serialism and the sadness and the all of it. So, yes—I mean, it really did feel like I was able to throw my whole self into it.
Was it almost like playing lots of parts at once? I was just thinking that Agatha’s layers almost correspond to different moments in your career, like an archeological site. There’s the brassy best-friend character, on top, and then, for a while, we think she’s a real woman trapped in this constraining role, almost like Mrs. Fletcher—
Oh, that’s so funny! I never connected it to my work previously, and I certainly never thought of my career leading to this particular show. It’s all been a real surprise.
As a viewer, it was so cathartic to have that reveal, that it was “Agatha all along,” in light of your previous work. As if you finally got to say, yes, you know, I’m actually the power source behind all your onscreen enchantment.
Oh, my God. I definitely felt catharsis when we were doing that. The theme song. I mean, that was so fun. We just laughed the whole time. And in my later forties, like, it’s so bananas to me. I certainly didn’t feel that power in myself when I was playing those best-friend parts. So, yeah, maybe.
I don’t want to put words in your mouth. But there’s the comic-book story of “Kathryn Hahn,” right? She made her name in big-budget comedy films, and then she was reborn as an indie darling. And then the mainstream tried to steal her back. Does that feel right to you as a narrative about your own career?
I think it has been one foot in front of the other. In my twenties, I kind of went where I was cast. I just didn’t have any real choice. I wanted to act. And I definitely felt divorced a little bit from the work that I was asked to be doing, and I felt like I was playing the part of it. This is very interesting because I did definitely feel like I was playing the part of an actor playing the part of the best friend.
You were Agatha all al—never mind.
And I came from the theatre, and I felt like I had much more autonomy when I was onstage. I had much more control over the arc of my performance. I also felt like I was kind of trying to fit into this box of what was, I thought, a camera performer. These tropes or whatever. It wasn’t really until my mid-thirties that I started to feel confident or feel a flame: the power of my individual self. I had started to see the beauty and the power of other individuals, I think. And then I was just drawn to creators who saw me and who wanted to work with my own individual—my own personhood, if that makes sense.
Yeah. I was thinking about the way we load up superheroes with all these ideals and expectations—you’ve talked about how, when you played Raquel, the rabbi on “Transparent,” it was important to you that she be more than a symbolic exemplar, a stand-in for religious authority. And so many of your characters, in “Afternoon Delight” or even “Bad Moms,” are real people in roles that other people invest with metaphorical importance. And they’re trying to be themselves.
Again, this wasn’t a conscious thing, but I was kind of always shifting toward whatever the most interesting light was. “Bad Moms” was just a great script. I hadn’t seen that kind of movie before. And, in the same way, I was turned on by, you know, the dark corners of a woman’s experience, the complexity. There are nooks and crannies that I’m so turned on by, and now there are writers and creators that are also interested. Young women are interested in looking at older women—they’re interested in what that is, because it’s so mysterious, and there used to be such an invisibility shield.
I wanted to ask you about that in the context of “WandaVision,” because one way that you’ve humanized your characters is by exploring them as sexual beings. But you can’t do that in a Marvel show.
I think I can! Agatha has a sex life—I definitely feel like it’s in there. She talks about her hubby, Ralph, and she says, “There’s no taming this tiger.”
O.K., but I guess you can’t address it as explicitly as you can in, like, “I Love Dick.”
Yes. But I would argue that we don’t need a cutaway to, like, Agatha in bed, in “WandaVision.” I don’t think that would add to the nuance or the forward motion.
No, of course! I guess I just meant that you’ve become a sort of avatar of messy, sensual female leads in their thirties and forties. And there’s this thing now where Hollywood likes to deepen characters by sexualizing them. With Agatha, you didn’t have that particular tool.
I mean, no matter what the gig is, I try to find the root underneath. With those scenes, I always knew what I was getting myself into in terms of that kind of work and that kind of vulnerability. And, you know, I always make sure that I walk onto those sets feeling very safe and protected and that my scene partners feel very safe and very protected. And I’ve worked with intimacy coördinators, which is a new thing, and I can’t imagine not working with them now. But, in all those cases, I felt that the sexual scenarios were very baked in. They were there to show something from a female point of view. They weren’t there to titillate, they weren’t objectifying. They were trying to get into the experience of a woman human.
Right. Your project in general seems to be exploring the personhood of characters who haven’t always been seen as themselves, as real people. A Marvel character, though, is not a real person! Agatha is an ancient magical being. So did you feel a tension there?
It was so fun! I mean, if I were to join this particular universe, I couldn’t have imagined a part that would have been more thrilling and more like an onion. So many layers. And, you know, I love my job so madly. To be able to swing from Eve Fletcher to something like this is why I got into this mess in the first place. I’m still pinching myself that I’m not pigeonholed. I think back to school and when I was playing Molière one day and then, like, Polonius. It’s just been a dream chapter that this kind of stuff can happen.
