Original Hocus Pocus stars reveal their thoughts on the sequel

Joey Nolfi
·3 min read
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You don't have to twist their bones or bend their backs: Hocus Pocus stars Vinessa Shaw, Omri Katz, and Jason Marsden are ready and willing to share their thoughts on the Halloween classic's long-awaited Disney+ sequel.

Though they don't appear in director Anne Fletcher's continuation of the time-tested 1993 Halloween classic starring Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy as a trio of 300-year-old witches wreaking havoc on modern Salem, the OG Hocus Pocus actors exclusively tell EW they mostly enjoyed watching the long-awaited follow-up.

"I saw it, and I felt everyone salivating over those ladies again," explains Shaw, who played Allison, one of the teens who battled the Sanderson Sisters in the first movie. "It satiated my wanting to see them, and I love the new actors that are involved. I especially thought the backstory girls playing the witches as children were hilarious. I enjoyed it. It was fun."

Marsden, who voiced Binx the cat, "thought it was fun" but suffered from a "severe under-use of [supporting actress] Hannah Waddingham" in the role of the witches' coven mother in a flashback sequence. "I was hoping to see lots more of her," he says.

Hocus Pocus 2, Hocus Pocus
Hocus Pocus 2, Hocus Pocus

Disney + Original 'Hocus Pocus' actors share their opinions on Disney's 'Hocus Pocus 2' sequel.

Katz, the actor who starred as Max in the first movie, had a more difficult time processing the sequel at first. "I remember we were at a convention the weekend it came out. As I was going to sleep, I was like, I'll watch it. I think I got about 30 minutes in, and I found some joy in the beginning with the origin part, and then something about it, I just wasn't feeling it, anyway, I fell asleep," he admits. "When I got back to L.A., I watched the rest of it, and then I started to actually enjoy it, and I saw the fun in it. I think it would've been more fun if we were involved, but it was still very enjoyable."

The sequel follows a new group of teens (Whitney Peak, Belissa Escobedo, Lilia Buckingham) who wage war with the witches after two of them unwittingly bring the sisters back from a 30-year purgatory. Thora Birch, who played Dani in the original, was initially meant to have a supporting role in the project but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts with Netflix's Wednesday series, which she also later exited.

Fletcher previously told EW that she didn't include the original actors in the sequel because it might be distracting to longtime fans.

"We wanted to weave in all of the people that the fans loved, and when you sat back with all the ingredients and story, you're like, how do we make this work?" Fletcher explained. "It was very difficult to try to have them be a part of it because we did talk about it — painstakingly. You're trying to stay on track with story even if they came in as a cameo. People would say, 'They could be in the background!' and I'm like, really? You're going to put the leads of the first movie in the background and be satisfied? You're not going to be satisfied; you're going to be angry."

Hocus Pocus 2
Hocus Pocus 2

Disney+ The Sanderson Sisters return in 'Hocus Pocus 2.'

Katz, though, notes that he would've been fine with a cameo.

"My phone was definitely not ringing. Crickets," he says with a laugh. Offering up an idea for how he and Shaw could've made a brief appearance in the film, Katz says, "It didn't even have to be the characters; we could've been together, like the janitor at the school."

Hocus Pocus and Hocus Pocus 2 are now streaming on Disney+. Read EW's full interview with the OG cast here.

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