‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’ Interview: Joshua Conkel Talks Writing for Our Favorite Netflix Witch

Sharai Bohannon |

Dec 10, 2021

Rivervale is taking over Tuesdays on the CW for the next few weeks. This temporary name change is due to a five-episode crossover event. Kiernan Shipka will step back into the role of Sabrina Spellman (from Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) and visit Riverdale. Most people would refresh their memories with a Chilling Adventures of Sabrina rewatch to prepare for this crossover event. However, I used this as a reason to bother Joshua Conkel about his time writing for our favorite Netflix witch.

Dread Central: This upcoming Sabrina-Riverdale crossover resurrected some of my Sabrina group texts. Is it weird to see fans starting to get excited again while still mourning Chilling Adventures of Sabrina after almost a year?

Joshua Conkel: It’s sweet. I mourned the show ending back in 2020, so I’ve moved, but I’m proud of the show, and I adore Kiernan. So, I’m glad she gets to continue.

Who would you have wanted to see crossover into Greendale? And why?

JC: I’m biased, but aesthetically I’m more interested in Greendale. So, I guess I’d prefer to see the crossover there, but that’s not the way the cookie crumbled.

**Would we have gotten more of these events if Chilling Adventures of Sabrina made it another season or two?**

JC: Crossovers were really difficult before, basically to the point of being impossible, just because of the different networks and logistics. I remember we wanted to use a syrup bottle from Riverdale and we couldn’t even do that. So I think Sabrina being canceled opened the door for the crossover on Riverdale, unfortunately.

**I had no idea there was a darker take on Sabrina the Teenage Witch before your show was announced. Were you familiar with the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina comics before earning a spot on the show?**

JC: I read them to prepare for my interview, and I was aware that Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa had sort of taken over the Archie-verse. I really loved the comics, so I was excited to get the opportunity.

What was it like working with a comic book as source material? Were you all trying to stay true to the source? Or did you allowed to kind of take certain aspects and run with it?

JC: The source material rarely came up, to be honest. I think Roberto wanted the freedom to do something new and, being the creative director of Archie, felt comfortable working that way. We did have a kind of a bank of ideas and characters from Sabrina comics that we would go to, but it wasn’t used that often.

**I know stage and TV are completely different. However, do you think your experience adapting Peter Pan helped prepare you for this kind of undertaking?**

JC: It did. Also, adapting A Series of Unfortunate Events for Netflix was more of a traditional adaptation, too. Sabrina is technically an adaptation, but not really functionally an adaptation since we were free to pivot from the source material. It didn’t really feel like an adaptation. The comics rarely came up, and the 90s show never came up.

I remember many people being ridiculously upset that Salem would not be a talking cat in this version. Was this the biggest random hill people tried to die on? Or was there anything else as confusingly funny?

JC: Oh God, Salem. I speak only for myself here: I hate Salem the talking cat so much. It would have been tonally jarring on our show, and the people who wanted it would have hated it if they got it. I was squarely anti-talking Salem, but there was a constant debate about it in the room because of external pressure from fans. We were always on the verge of making him talk, and I just really didn’t want him to.

One of the biggest conversations was trying to figure out when the show was set. Are you allowed to tell us when the series takes place? Also, was it hard creating a world that does not have a hard and set decade?

JC: It’s not set any time. By which, I mean it’s timeless. I love that choice because you get to pull aesthetics that you like from the past but aren’t tied to certain decades. But I know it confuses people, too. I understood this choice intuitively, so it was surprising to me that it was so confounding to people.

This was one of the better depictions of witchcraft we have had in recent years, especially on TV. Were there conversations about how to handle witchcraft within the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina? Or how to avoid falling into some of the traps of previous shows?

JC: It was an interesting experience because there were various types of practicing pagans and witches in the writers’ room and onset. It was both acknowledged and not acknowledged in that our occult knowledge was put to use, but also it’s a horror story, and you can’t be too precious about things. People are sensitive, but witchcraft is different from other spiritual practices because it’s tied up in pop culture in art that Catholicism, for example, isn’t. Witches have always been fact and fiction at the same time, and both sides influence the other.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina had a ton of monsters, creatures, and entities somewhere between the two. What were some of your favorites? And why?

JC: I loved Apophis in my first episode, An Exorcism in Greendale, because he was made of two dildos and the guts of a Tickle Me Elmo doll. We had a lot of laughs with him on set.

Did you have a favorite character to write for?

JC: I have a love of writing extremely severe women, so I always loved writing for Zelda and Madam Satan.

What was it like working with THE Michelle Gomez?

JC: She is the absolute best. She curses like a sailor and is so weird. She’ll be like, “can I try this lying on the floor?” and you have to be like, “sure!” She’s very experimental and funny and just really, really kind. Everyone on the crew just loved her.

So many characters in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina are kind of great and iconic in their own right. Was there talk of spin-offs for any of them? If so, are there characters that you specifically want more time with?

JC: I would have loved a spinoff of Ambrose and Prudence traveling the world taking our bad witches. We were always trying to get more of Tati generally because we realized very quickly into season one that she was a star.

What was your favorite episode to work on? And why does that one stand out?

JC: Probably my first one. I got to work with the director Rachel Talalay who’s a cult and horror movie icon. She produced all the 80s Nightmare on Elm Street films and all of John Waters 80s movies. John Waters officiated her wedding! That was the episode where we put Harvey in a crop top, which is still my crowning achievement. I got to ask Rachel if they knew Nightmare 2 was super gay. Her answer: “No! We just thought it was metal!”

You have a very specific voice as a writer. One of the things I loved is that your episodes felt similar to your other work that I’m familiar with. Especially the “All of Them Witches” episode, but it never felt out of place in this world. Can you talk about writing as part of an ensemble while also staying true to your aesthetic?

JC: Whenever you work on a tv show, it’s really all about the showrunner. Every single person is there to serve that person’s vision, so it’s really just not about you. That said, you do your best work when you care about the show, and I cared a lot about Sabrina. I was just uniquely suitable for that room as a queer person with a campy sensibility, a deep love of classic horror films, and an expert knowledge of the occult.

**What is one thing about Chilling Adventures of Sabrina that you want to talk about and no one ever asks you? Also, feel free to correct that wrong and tell us about it.**

JC: I wish we could have had a final run of eight episodes, which we likely would have gotten if it weren’t for COVID-19. I don’t know for sure what would have happened, but it feels like we were gearing up for a battle between heaven and hell, and it would have been nice to finish that way.

Are you allowed to talk about what’s next for you? If so, please spill.

JC: I’ve written two horror films that are in various stages of development, and I co-created a Disney+ show that’s in process. It’s a sci-fi show about a group of juvenile delinquents, but they’re all from different alien races, and they become unlikely heroes saving the galaxy.