Production begins this month on the first season of Netflix's dark, horrific take on Sabrina the Teenage Witch – a project that was going by (and might still have) the title Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Kiernan Shipka will be playing the teenage witch herself in the series, and a supporting cast is starting to form around her.
We had previously heard that Jaz Sinclair will be playing Sabrina's best friend Rosalind Walker. Now it has been announced that Michelle Gomez and Chance Perdomo are joining the show as series regulars.
Perdomo's career is just getting started – so far the only projects he has been seen in are a 2016 short film and one episode each of the TV series Hetty Feather and Midsomer Murders. On Sabrina, he will be playing Ambrose Spellman, "Sabrina’s warlock cousin from England. Placed under house arrest by the Witches Council, Ambrose is forbidden from leaving the funeral home where he lives with the Spellman women. Witty, puckish and pan-sexual, he is one of Sabrina’s partners in crime, always up for mischief."
Gomez, on the other hand, has almost thirty years of credits to her name. She's best known for playing Missy the Master / Mistress on Doctor Who in recent years, and also appeared on a couple episodes of Gotham as The Lady. Here she'll be playing Mary Wardell, "Sabrina’s favorite teacher and mentor at Baxter High. When she is possessed by the devil’s handmaiden, Madam Satan, Ms. Wardell turns into a sultry, cunning manipulator, always trying to lure Sabrina down the Path of Night."
This new version of Sabrina the Teenage Witch is said to be tonally in the vein of ROSEMARY'S BABY and THE EXORCIST. Created by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, the show
finds Sabrina 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.
Netflix has given a two season, 20 episode order to the series, which is being executive produced by Aguirre-Sacasa, Lee Toland Krieger, Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter, and Jon Goldwater.