The Netflix series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, a horrific take on the Sabrina the Teenage Witch character, stars Kiernan Shipka as Sabrina herself, but in the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: A Midwinter's Tale holiday special that the streaming service will be releasing on December 14th we'll be seeing a flashback to the days before Sabrina became a teenage witch – and in this flashback she'll be played by a different actress.
That actress is twelve-year-old Mckenna Grace, who has done a lot of genre work in her five years of acting, including a role in the recent Netflix mini-series Haunting of Hill House (pictured above)
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: A Midwinter's Tale has the following synopsis:
The Church of Night, like all covens, celebrates the Winter Solstice – the longest night of the year – when families gather around the Yule Fire to sing pagan carols and tell ghost stories. But the holidays are also a time for guests and visitors – both welcome and unwelcome – you never know what might come down the chimney…
Grace isn't the only new addition to the world of Sabrina. It has also been announced that Alexis Denisof and Jedidiah Goodacre have joined the cast of the show for its currently filming second season.
Denisof is best known for playing Wesley Wyndam-Price on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel. His Sabrina character is Adam Masters, boyfriend of Mary Wardwell (Michelle Gomez).
Handsome and charming, Adam returns to Greendale after a stint overseas working with Physicians Without Frontiers—unaware that his fiancé has been taken over by the demoness Madam Satan.
Goodacre, whose credits include THE RECALL and the CW series The Originals, will be playing a warlock named Dorian Gray, owner of the nightclub Dorian's Gray Room. And yes, he is a version of the character Oscar Wilde introduced in his 1890 story The Picture of Dorian Gray.
He is an enigmatic gentleman of an indeterminate age and is very good at keeping secrets, especially his own — a cursed portrait he hides from prying eyes.
On Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, the teenage witch is
wrestling to reconcile her dual nature as a half-witch, half-mortal, while fighting the evil forces that threaten her, her family and the daylight world humans inhabit.
Sabrina Spellman is described as an empowered young woman — half-human, half-witch — who is just beginning her dark education as a sorceress, even as she tries to maintain a normal life as a sophomore at Baxter High. Intelligent, compassionate and brave to the point of recklessness, Sabrina is all that stands between us and the forces of darkness that threaten our world.
Other cast members include Miranda Otto as Sabrina's disciplinarian aunt Zelda; Lucy Davis as her nurturing aunt Hilda; Ross Lynch as her love interest Harvey Kinkle; Jaz Sinclair as her best friend Rosalind Walker; Chance Perdomo as her warlock cousin Ambrose; Michelle Gomez as Sabrina's teacher Mary Wardell, who becomes possessed by the devil's handmaiden Madam Satan; Richard Coyle as Father Blackwood, High Priest of the Church of Night and Dean of the Academy of the Unseen Arts, a man with a "terrifying dark agenda"; Bronson Pinchot as Baxter High's villainous puritanical principal George Hawthorne; and Tati Gabrielle as Prudence, leader of a trio of witches called the Weird Sisters and a character who has a possibly life-threatening grudge against Sabrina.
I haven't started watching this show yet, but I'm going to get to it one of these days. Soon!