The lovely Madchen Amick joined her fellow Witches of East End cast members for a wild 2014 San Diego Comic-Con weekend that included a panel with fans, autograph signings, and a witchy party that took over the Tipsy Crow in San Diego’s Gaslamp District. But before putting promotional duties aside to relax and enjoy the party, Amick sat down with a small group of journalists to talk about season two of the Lifetime series and playing Aunt Wendy.
Madchen Amick Witches of East End Interview
What do you like about connecting with fans over Twitter?
Madchen Amick: “Well, it’s definitely something that I had to wrap my head around. David Lynch – Twin Peaks was the first thing I did – and his philosophy is to not reveal the magic. Don’t talk about what happens behind the scenes. I really totally believe that so I was sort of indoctrinated into this business with that in mind, so I’ve been really, really resistant to social media. But, you know, as everything’s changing, everybody on the Witches show started promoting it and I felt responsible to help promote it. So I do have to say it’s been really nice to get instant feedback. It’s kinda weirdly like theater days when you got feedback immediately, right?”
Has any of the feedback really shocked you?
Madchen Amick: “No, what I do really enjoy is that the fans seem to get little things that I put into the character. Like I’m always wearing feather earrings and I have little dangling pieces of jewelry and there was like, ‘That’s an Aunt Wendy hunt. That’s a trophy from her hunt.’ I love that they get that. That’s fun.”
Does Wendy still surprise you when you get the scripts?
Madchen Amick: “In the pilot, they never planned on Wendy being alive any longer than the pilot so I wasn’t supposed to be a part of the series. So I kind of went into it in the pilot with a very lighthearted attitude, like, ‘I’m just gonna make it the best I can for while I’m here.’ I think that they picked up on that and wrote her in that way. I just love every script that I get. What funny lines are they going to have for Wendy now? And then what can I do to embellish it? What can I bring to the table as well as a collaborative thing?”
At what point did they tell you you were still on the show?
Madchen Amick: “We filmed it in the fall, and then I went back to try and figure out what the next job was going to be. My agent and manager got a phone call over Christmas that said, ‘Just before she commits to anything else, please let us know first.’ And they were like, ‘Okay,’ and then by the time the first of the year came around, they had decided to pick up the show and then they had asked me to be a part of it. So it’s sort of like I snuck in the backdoor to the series, just the way Aunt Wendy would.”
What do you enjoy about the four strong female characters and strong actresses bouncing off each other each week?
Madchen Amick: “It’s a blessing and this doesn’t happen very often, really honestly. I think there are some other shows that actors lie and say, ‘No, I love my cast members.’ Number one, the characters are written really well. They’re not stereotypical women and they cast four very strong talented women. We’re all comfortable in our own skin so we can respect each other, enjoy being together, and it’s so much fun to go to work. And the boys…we’ve incorporated the boys into the coven.”
Is the tension with Frederick going to come to a head?
Madchen Amick: “Well, it’s hard because Wendy’s instincts about Frederick I think are right of course, but the family’s kind of against that thinking so she can’t push too far. So she walks this fine line between keeping an eye on him but still letting everybody know that she doesn’t think that he’s telling the truth. It does. There’s some stuff that comes up definitely between them that things come to a head.”
How was filming the Asgard scenes with those outfits?
Madchen Amick: “It just helps give you the depth to your character, where you came from, how long you’ve been around. All of the flashback stuff is so fun because then you’re not just doing this dialogue that talks about what you did in the 1800s or the 1970s or whatever. You get to actually see the characters go through it, and it just gives you that richness and that depth.”
Do you have an affinity for the witch genre?
Madchen Amick: “I love magic. It wasn’t necessarily specific to witches because to be honest, all witches that I had seen before was really stereotypical bitchy woman. But I do just love magic in general. Even I love how Game of Thrones is incorporating magic into it, White Queen, I don’t know if you saw that, or remember Merlin, the miniseries back in the late ‘90s? So I do love the genre.”
