Welcome to Pour One Out! In this series, IndieWire celebrates some of our favorite characters on TV that have come to the end of their run this season, with the stars that played them.
[Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “Agatha All Along.”]
Despite the stirring send-off for her clairvoyant character Lilia Calderu in the seventh episode of “Agatha All Along” on Disney+, Grammy and Tony winner Patti LuPone is not quite ready to say goodbye to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “As I said, we didn’t see her land,” she tells IndieWire over breakfast in Beverly Hills. “I told Kevin Feige what he should do is in every Marvel film, in the corner of the film, you should see Lilia falling.”
Going all the way back to when she was cast in the “WandaVision” follow up, LuPone remembers feeling like the role was the work of cosmic timing. “It was really, really bizarre. I had finished a run of ‘Company’ on Broadway, had given up my Equity card because it’s the worst union for actors. I was sitting at my kitchen table going, ‘I wonder what direction my career is going to go?’ Ring, ring, ‘Hello. Marvel calling.’ It was so out of the blue.”
Yet, somehow, this fortune-telling witch that she was being asked to play came right on the heels of her shooting “American Horror Story: NYC,” where she played a bathhouse singer that conducted a tarot reading with Joe Mantello’s character. With that in mind, as “Agatha All Along” producer Mary Livanos and showrunner Jac Schaeffer were done pitching her, she said “‘Well, I think I am a Sicilian witch.’ It was a very easy yes.”
LuPone has also learned to jump on the opportunities where she could tell she was wanted. “Years ago I gave up going after roles because I never got them. And so there was great heartache. To avoid the heartache, instead of wanting a role, I wait to see what comes to me,” said the Emmy-nominated actress. “When they want you, you have a better chance of having a good time.”
Though she describes her previous television experiences as “you’re flying by the seat of your tail week by week,” LuPone was impressed by all the preparation that “Agatha All Along” allowed for. When she asked Schaeffer in their initial meeting if she had scripts, the showrunner had all nine episodes ready for her to read, “which was shocking,” she said. “I just loved listening to her. I loved her voice. I loved the tone of the script, everything.” LuPone did not even worry about her counterpart in the comics until one of the show’s composers, Emmy winner Kristen Lopez, brought her up. “She showed me a picture of Lilia,” said the theater icon. “I went ‘She’s hot!’”
When they got to the Atlanta, the “Agatha All Along” cast, which includes Joe Locke, Aubrey Plaza, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Debra Jo Rupp, and Kathryn Hahn reprising her Emmy-nominated performance as Agatha Harkness, also were given time to read through each script together twice. “It was the first time in my career on TV that this happened,” said LuPone. “I’ve always wondered why in film that whoever is presenting the money to the event doesn’t invest in that meeting. Because you meet the actor before you meet them on set. ‘Hello, My name’s Patti, my name’s Kathryn,’ and then you get into it. And you see the arc of your character and you see the arc of the film.”
Though Rupp and Plaza had conflicts that meant they were not present with the group the entire time (like “Megalopolis” for the latter,) production was set up to foster a real sense of camaraderie between the cast. “There were a lot of dinners together. There was a lot of time together. We all liked each other. We actually formed a friendship. We went to that famous strip club where strippers go to die,” said LuPone in reference to The Clermont Lounge, an Atlanta staple.
However, there was a moment early on in shooting where the screen veteran was convinced she was going to be fired. “I broke my wrist, second week in,” said LuPone. “I tripped and ran sideways into the bottom half of the scissor lift.” Ever the professional, she said “My head went right into ‘protecting the costume’ zone. And while I saw this thing popping out, I was lying down. I said, ‘Get the wig off. Get the jewelry off,’ because they’ll cut the jewelry off. ‘Get the wig off.’ And so there I am in my wig cap. And they took all the jewelry because I had tons of jewelry on. And I was sitting in an ambulance. I’d never been in an ambulance.”
They were only on Episode 2 before their characters are actually on the mythical, arduous Witches’ Road, and LuPone was already emotional at the thought of leaving her onscreen coven. “I just saw Kathryn and Sasheer and Ali and Joe looking up at me saying goodbye. I can see them in my mind’s eye right now. This was the end. Bye.” It was a bit of a microcosm of what she would experience when her time on the show actually came to an end.
Despite having the scripts for the entire season, LuPone did not know that her character Lilia would be sacrificed in one of the final trials the coven faces on the Witches’ Road. The script did mention she falls, “but it doesn’t necessarily say that ‘you’re dead.’” As they were going into production on the fifth episode of the series, Schaeffer provided a clarification. “She told me that when we get to seven, I would die. She was being so generous. She didn’t have to tell me,” said LuPone. “I went, ‘Oh, but I wanted a second season.’ [Jac] said, ‘I don’t do second seasons.’”
Her final sequence as Lilia is a showcase of Schaeffer’s expertise at paying off several mysteries she threads throughout the duration of the Outstanding Comedy Series contender. Through the divination trial, the audience learns that much of Lilia’s eccentricity comes from her experience living life out of order, giving more context to moments earlier in the season, where the character would blurt out what seemed to be random statements. “Whenever I would go off into something else, they were called ‘bops,’” said LuPone. It was a concept that the actress did not quite comprehend at first, but had the series creator there on set for support. “Jac would help me. Say we’d finish an episode, or a scene, I’d raise my hand, because there were lots of unanswered questions in each episode,” said the actress. “Jac is brilliant at writing these puzzles. I don’t play games. I don’t know the last time I actually put a puzzle together.”
Though the episode ends on both a triumphant and tragic note, with Lilia realizing the bops direct her toward beating the Witches’ Road trial, but also signal the end of what has been a centuries-long life, with her almost literally falling on the sword to save her coven from the Salem 7 witches that were out to kill them, resulting in fans immediately calling for LuPone to win all the awards for her performance, the actress is all too humble about the experience.
“Honest to God, I said to Jac after I saw it, ‘I wished I’d done better.’ I’m saying that because the answers were in every episode. But because I didn’t understand the puzzle, I felt I didn’t serve her well enough in episode seven. I’m just saying that because I’m being highly critical of myself,” she said. But the drive to want to do it all over again, and one up herself, is what makes LuPone the acclaimed artist she is. “I don’t know anybody in my circle of friends that’s ever satisfied with their performance. I think we all strive to do better. I don’t think it’s healthy to go, ‘That was my best.’ Where are you going to go from there?,” she said. “I’m hoping that I never lose the ability to criticize myself, because it’s the gateway to growth.”
LuPone still gets emotional thinking about her last bit of dialogue as Lilia. “It’s all in the line, ‘I loved being a witch.’ It’s all in that line. It’s all in that line,” she said, seemingly taking pauses to hold back the tears. “I loved being with all of those people. I loved the entire experience of shooting ‘Agatha All Along’. I loved my coven, my friends.” Never would she have thought her welcome respite from the theater world would come in the form of a role in a superhero series, but playing Lilia has energized the outspoken actress to seek out more film and TV roles, including more entries into the MCU.
“All I can say is that I had the greatest time in the Marvel universe, of which I wasn’t, because I wasn’t on the Marvel stage. We were our own little entity in the corner. But if that’s Marvel, I had a blast,” said LuPone. Were this truly to be the end of the line for Lilia, she would even consider going the Robert Downey Jr. route of returning as another comic book character. “If it’s a really great part, I wouldn’t turn it down. But I don’t know whether anybody’s thinking of me in that genre. People in our business have very limited vision,” she said. “What is that phrase? ‘You’re only as good as your last shift.’ So in the Marvel world, they may see me as a dead Lilia.”
But whether it is “Agatha All Along,” or “Girls,” or “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” or “Beau Is Afraid,” LuPone’s willingness to take on roles that may surprise her core Broadway audience is what has led to this momentum that makes one feel her best on screen role may be ahead of her. “I’ve always been left-of-center. I’ve never been somebody that was first thought of for a role,” said LuPone. “Because my career has been so varied that people know me from the different parts of my career, it’s come to this where all of these really, really cool things are starting to happen.”
“Agatha All Along” is now streaming on Disney+.
