"Chilling Adventures of Sabrina" Star Jaz Sinclair on Rosalind's Surprising Twist and Female Friendships
Mild spoilers for Season 1 of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina will follow.
Jaz Sinclair is “obsessed” with witches, so it’s kind of perfect that she landed a role on Netflix’s witchy new series, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. There’s just one slight problem: this witch obsessive doesn’t actually get to play a witch — instead, she’s one of Sabrina’s BFFs at her mortal high school, Rosalind Walker. But don’t worry, she’s still excited. Like, really, really excited.
"That was the one thing. When I came on the show, I was like ‘I really get to be on this magical show and be a Muggle?’” she tells Teen Vogue with a laugh. But, as fans who’ve devoured the entire season well know, Roz also isn’t quite full-Muggle by the time the credits roll on Episode 10. The teen gets a mystical power called “the cunning,” a.k.a. psychic visions, which eventually helps Sabrina save the day, NBD. It allows Rosalind to become the de facto CAOS sleuth — almost like Greendale’s answer to sister series Riverdale’s Betty Cooper, according to Jaz. And Rosalind’s special ability being an asset “works for me,” she adds with another chuckle. “But I really love that it's past, present, future and symbols too. There's no limit really to what Roz can and can't see."
Plus, while Roz doesn’t get to cast spells or go to witch school like her pal Sabrina Spellman, the character marks a first for Jaz in her nearly 10 years as an actor. “I'm honestly just really excited to have a character that I can stand behind, belief-wise. It feels really good,” she says, referring, of course, to Roz’s cause for the majority of CAOS Season 1: the campaign to bring back a series of banned books at Baxter High, championed by Roz and the club she and Sabrina founded, WICCA (Women’s Intersectional Cultural and Creative Association).
“I really love what Rosalind is about. I really love that she's pro women; I really love that she's so passionate; I love the idea of kids watching this show and starting clubs like WICCA at their schools to support each other, because I just really think that having a strong foundation and women supporting women [for] individual empowerment, but then also empowering our entire society because we support each other,” she says. “There really, really isn’t anything that we can't do. And I hope that when people see Roz and her passion on screen, it inspires passion in them to talk about the things they care about.”
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And she just might do that. Jaz loves the idea that the series’ storylines are “timeless” — helped by the fact that they are told in the context of present day with aesthetics of the 1960s, when the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina comics actually take place — but there’s something quite timely about the idea of teens demanding that their access to information not be limited. After all, we live in a time when the term “Free Press” is a constant rallying cry and protest hashtag, and the very concept of “truth” has been repeatedly declared “dead.”
Sure, the storyline of a library not carrying a couple of books might not feel all that fresh in a world where teens like Rosalind and Sabrina could quite easily hop on Amazon.com and order almost any book they wanted for under $20, or scour Google for someone’s bootleg PDF copy of The Bluest Eye. But the lack of guaranteed free access to certain narratives and histories is still something that affects young people, especially those without the funds or local resources to seek out books not deemed appropriate by their schools and local libraries. So Jaz’s cause is arguably just as important as Sabrina fighting off the Dark Lord.
Beyond the political ramifications of her Season 1 story, Jaz is thrilled about the way CAOS portrays female friendship, especially between Roz and Sabrina toward the end of Season 1, when her character is confronted with the truth about Sabrina and the pain that witches once inflicted on Roz’s ancestors.
“I liked that there was room for Roz to question things. I think that it's important to question things and not just accept everything right away. I really liked the element of her wondering, ‘Does this make my friend not a good person? What do I really feel? What is my intuition telling me? What do I feel when I look at this person?’” she says. “I really liked that the story gave me the opportunity to trust my gut and to come back to friendship because true friendship is hard to find and this whole witch thing is just an obstacle. If anything it made the relationship stronger. It made their trust deeper because now they can be completely honest with each other, which is so much more interesting to me.”
Of course, the end of Season 1 and Sabrina’s full commitment to her coven might make things a little difficult for her friendship with Roz moving forward, Jaz is excited that her cunning “does progress and does get bigger [in Season 2].” And while Jaz says Rosalind has always put family and friends first, her new special power will start to shake her world up a bit, especially since she knows that Sabrina also has one foot in this new mystical world.
Luckily for Jaz and Roz fans everywhere, we won’t have to wait too terribly long to find out just what that balance looks like because she and the crew are hard at work on Season 2, which will arrive sometime in 2019. And in the meantime, there’s always room to keep hoping that Season 2 grants Jaz her Riverdale crossover wish. “I just feel like Roz and Betty could get up to some shenanigans,” she jokes. The fanfic practically writes itself, folks.
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