Jac Schaeffer, Showrunner of ‘WandaVision’ and ‘Agatha All Along’, Talks Writing and Directing in the MCU

Jac Schaeffer came from the world of indie film with her 2009 writing and directorial debut TiMER, a sci-fi, romantic comedy about a world where you can get a timer that counts down until the moment you meet your soul mate. She was tapped to do other writing and joined the Disney family with Olaf’s Frozen Adventure in 2017, and contributed work to both Captain Marvel and Black Widow.

She hit the stratosphere with her work as the showrunner for WandaVision, the critically acclaimed television series that moved the character of Wanda Maximoff, known as the Scarlet Witch, through the grief of losing her beloved Vision in the events of the Avengers movies.

One of the villains of the show (aside from Wanda) was Agatha Harkness, a witch from deep within the Marvel Lore. She was introduced with a catchy music video and became a fan-favorite character played by Kathryn Hahn. At the end of WandaVision, Agatha is bound by a spell and has her powers taken from her.

Fortunately, that isn’t the end of Agatha, and Jac Schaeffer returned to run a spin off of WandaVision to show us Agatha’s journey to regain her power.

Agatha All Along debuted its first two episodes, written and directed by Schaeffer, on September 19th. She sat down with SCRIPT to talk about the process of writing in this world and how to balance the competing tones of the show and the character.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

SCRIPT Magazine: How did you approach breaking how Agatha would function on her own show?

Jac Schaeffer: Very early on, before I had sort of cracked the larger engine of the show, I knew I wanted to do a pilot that was in the vein of a true crime prestige drama series. It was a carryover from an idea that I had for WandaVision. My original pitch for WandaVision had Wanda going through the sitcoms and then toward the end, in what ended up being episode 108, she found herself in a CSI type of episode, and she had to solve her own mental health issues in this forensics environment. I'd always loved that idea. 

In WandaVision, we put Agatha on ice under a spell. So I knew that in approaching Agatha, I wanted to carry forward a lot of what was fun about WandaVision and appealing to fans. It was that immersive holistic embedding—going into a genre that was both fun for me creatively and for my colleagues and also fun for the audience. 

That was the design early on; it was that we would meet Agatha at the top of Agatha All Along inside of the spell, but that it would be warped and it felt so right that Agatha's version of Westview would be dark and gritty and murdery and you know what I mean? We talked a lot in the room about that, that's so appropriate for her because she loves seeing the darkness in people. And I think if asked, she would be like, 'Yeah, the true crime obsession is indicative of the fact that humans are dark.' And we loved that for her. 

Then the larger break of the show, like, what is the engine and deciding that it was a quest and what was the nature of the quest—that was a whole other ball of wax that was hard to crack.

SCRIPT Magazine: I want to talk about Agatha as an antihero. She can be heroic, but she's very into gaining power for herself and is a very selfish person. Agatha seems to be one of the outliers and one of the first villains—as we might think of them, at least from the comics material—to get this treatment. How do you balance that, to make it feel like it's still a Marvel thing and have that right tone and have her balance those decisions she has to make and still keep her true to her character? And what helps drive those decisions for you as you're looking at her true north of character in the writers' room?

Jac Schaeffer: I agree with all of that. I think the fun of Tony Stark is that he wants to be bad, but he's a hero despite himself. But Agatha is not that. Agatha is not a hero, despite herself. Agatha is entirely selfish and self-serving. I don't know, I feel like it should have been harder. It should have been more like, 'Oh, gosh, how are we going to make this villain sympathetic?' But it wasn't that challenging because she's not. It's never her aim to hurt someone. She doesn't hurt anyone just for the fun of it. 

She's interested in two things: She’s interested in what serves her and she's interested in witchcraft, specifically, enormously powerful witchcraft. And that makes sense to me. You know what I mean? There is respect and almost affection inherent in that, as indicated by how she felt about Wanda. She was mean to Wanda, but really she was fascinated by Wanda and admired her and wanted to hang out with her. 

And so for me, that sort of thread into her psychology just opens up a whole world of her being a sympathetic character that I can understand. So we populated the show with similarly flawed individuals who are also selfish and self-serving, who are self-sabotaging, who are constantly standing in their own way. And then they were just in conflict. 

Everybody is kind of an anti-hero in the show. That was really fun and felt very truthful there. There were occasionally times where we were like, maybe she does this and as a room we would have to discuss if that’s going too far. Like, are we crossing a line and do we want to? One of the big questions of the show asks if this is a redemption arc? And unfortunately, before the show airs, I can't answer that.

SCRIPT Magazine: WandaVision had a very certain tone where it felt like it felt like it was a little bit more tame in The Twilight Zone, where it's very happy. It's like you've got The Dick Van Dyke show, but is Rod Serling lurking behind their backs? And  obviously, you have the drama inherent in the story, of Wanda’s trauma. In Agatha All Along, it feels a lot more like you've gone full Tales From the Crypt. It's much more horror-based, but it still has that comedy. How did you approach that balance between horror and comedy, because it still feels light but also takes it that far.

Jac Schaeffer: That's an interesting comp. I hadn't actually thought of that myself. I mean, obviously The Twilight Zone is so, so tethered to WandaVision. I'm not explicitly a horror person. I am a genre person. I enjoy playing with the tropes of genre. So that's what this was for me. The intellectual exercise was like, 'OK, well, this show is based on this woman. She is a witch. We are tasked with defining witches inside of the MCU. This show is going to go horror. That's the direction we're going in.' 

Once I embraced that, then it was like, 'OK, what's horror and how many shades of horror can we put in this box?' Because that's what I loved about WandaVision how many TV tropes and shades of sitcom can we put in this show and do it accurately, authentically, while still giving it resonance inside of our show and our emotional arc? 

My touchstones for the show are like, Wizard of Oz and Labyrinth and Dark Crystal and The Never Ending Story and Princess Bride. That's the sort of deep down of it. And then the real horror stuff is more like a dollop here and a dollop there, where we get like legitimately scary. 

It is similar to WandaVision in that way where the scares in WandaVision, there's like a handful of Twilight Zoney jump scares where they are as cerebral as they are visceral. But the truth of WandaVision is the scariest. Her emotional situation is the deepest deep and I think this show is similar where the horror part of it is color in life. But really, the tonal piece that we had to be careful with is like, what is Agatha's true emotional journey in the show?

SCRIPT Magazine: That leads me to my next question. In WandaVision, I think a lot of people summed it up with that really terrific line that lit the internet and critic circles on fire that Vision gave, “What is grief but love persisting.” Really, WandaVision was an exploration of Wanda's grief, and Agatha is dealing with grief of a different kind. Hers is not love persisting. It's something else. It's that quest for her power, that grief for what she lost. What's that thing that she's missing that you're working on or working from as you're navigating her character from that inverse? This really does feel like a journey for Agatha and through her psyche and the things she has to grapple with the same way WandaVision was for Wanda.

Jac Schaeffer: Yeah. It has it has similar bones in that way. And what you're talking about was the earliest work of the room. The earliest work of the room was, 'OK, what are we saying about witchcraft? What is witchcraft? And what is the story, the truth, the emotional story we're telling about Agatha?'

We had to sort of chart a course. The way I defined Agatha—prior to the room, prior to anything—is that she's a liar, that it's just masks. This show is about pulling that mask all the way off. And what do we see? What is under the mask? It's hard to talk about at this point because there's so many spoilers inherent in that. 

But I think what you can get from the earliest episodes is that, yes, she wants power, right? That's her superficial goal. That's her super objective. But that can't be it, right? That's boring. What's underneath it? And it's it's fairly clear from the beginning that she reluctantly wants community, that this is a covenless witch who, deep down, wants a coven. And that's fascinating to me. What did Wanda want? She wanted to be safe and cozy with her family. That was a that was a very clear, true north. But there, the friction was the sort of logistical trappings were untenable. For Agatha, she's in the way of her own thing. And it's much more of a subtext and a fabric that we then exploit and explore deeper into the show.

SCRIPT Magazine: You directed the first two episodes of Agatha All Along, what did that experience bring to the writing?

Jac Schaeffer: I started as a director. Directing is what I wanted to do more than anything. I wrote so that I would have something to direct. I don't have that line of like 'I've always written and now I direct and it's changed my whole process.' It's more like the thrill of the thing that I imagined and having it turn out how I imagined or better. 

I think what was different and was kind of a challenge was directing at the scale I had never directed before. I'm also obviously an executive producer on it. As a writer, it so often comes down to you to fix the thing, especially if it's a budget issue, it's like, 'How do you fix the budget issue on the page?'

That's really the best way to do it. Wearing all the hats, I found myself being like, 'Yeah, I can make this work.' Like it was supposed to be a concert. I can make this work in a closet. Like I can do that because I have the power of the pen. But this was an experience where I learned—and I learned it from my fellow directors Rachel Goldberg and from Gandja Monteiro—that that's not always the case. You actually can't always make the sacrifices on the page. You actually do have to push at those limits as a director and fight for the spectacle and the grandeur of it.

SCRIPT Magazine: As you're working in the writers' room, with the experience of a director and knowing about those logistics and stuff; how much does that experience help as you're breaking down a script in the first place?

Jac Schaeffer: I think it hurt me on Agatha, because on WandaVision, I'd never made a TV show before, and I'd only directed tiny indie things. It was very much the sky's the limit in how we ideated. And then Kevin Feige would come in and put guardrails on things and in a terrific way and it yielded amazing results. We found solutions to things and it was great. 

I did find in the Agatha room having been on set through production of WandaVision, I found myself shooting down ideas that were just wildly unrealistic. If I'm lucky enough to be in another room, I will try and temper that, because I think I brought a little too much realism into the blue sky space. My team was great and we were still pretty creative despite me pooh-poohing things.

SCRIPT Magazine: You've worked on Marvel features, you've worked on Marvel television stuff. How do you approach the different scales of that storytelling? It seems like there's an interesting balance with the features, you probably have a larger scale of spectacle, but with the shows you have a larger canvas, if that makes sense. How do you approach those different balances as you're as you're looking at the stories?

Jac Schaeffer: I think you're right about the canvas, but that's actually not my approach. What I enjoy in television that I feel is so much harder to accomplish in features is the cliffhanger. It’s the twist. The rug pull. The big reveal. You can get at minimum one in an episode. You can end every episode with a cliffhanger. You can also have big reveals in each episode and that is thrilling. 

Some of the movies that I admire the most are movies like Fight Club, Sixth Sense, The Matrix, these movies that when I was a young person just blew my brain apart. This is not to say that you can't still pull one over on an audience and really thrill them with big reveals inside of features. But I think in the current cultural landscape, I find more opportunities for those kinds of thrills inside of television. To me, that's the difference. 

I think a lot of people talk about, in a TV show, [they] can spend so much more time with these characters, but that's not the thrill for me. The thrill for me is I can really take the audience's hand and lead them on a journey that makes them want to come back week to week. It's also why I haven't yet made a multi-season show, because I throw everything into that season. I'm like this. These are all my tricks. You get them all in this limited series. Which has been really fun so far.

SCRIPT Magazine: I want to ask about those twists, turns, and cliffhangers because you talked about doing that in movies and blowing minds, but ultimately they have to satisfy by the end of the season. Obviously, we can't talk about spoilers for Agatha All Along, you obviously don't want to spoil anything, but as you're constructing the the mouse traps across each episode—especially with the first two episodes both as writer director—what’s your approach as a writer?

Jac Schaeffer: I believe so strongly in sticking the landing and it's always up to the audience whether or not you truly stick the landing. But I believe that you have to put all your energy toward that. It's your job to try the best you absolutely can to stick the landing. You have to plot your mysteries, figure out what they are. It’s like a good murder mystery. The feeling that you want at the end of a murder mystery is you want to be surprised, but not. It still needs to feel within the realm of possibility, right? It needs to make sense and still surprise you. 

So you have to thread your reveal sufficiently. And that's on the page, that's in production, and it’s very much in post-production. And it’s figuring it out and having other people watch it and figuring out. Are things poking out too much? Are they not poking out enough? 

I'm not a big believer in the huge twist at the end. My process is sort of letting pressure out. Like, you’ve got to have reveals along the way. And really, you need one big one that feels satisfying and feels like you have allowed the audience in sufficiently so they don't feel like they're being toyed with. They feel like what they're seeing at this point, if not the full truth, a level of truth that makes me feel like I'm not being manipulated. That it's not all smoke and mirrors and just for show. What are your baby reveals? What's your substantive midway through reveal? And making sure that however things resolve that what you're aiming for is taking people's breath away. But everything falls into place. It's hard. It's really hard.

SCRIPT Magazine: Music plays a really intriguing part in the story. And this was true in WandaVision, too. Even Agatha's reveal was one big music video. As a writer, how do you approach that aspect of the storytelling?

Jac Schaeffer: On WandaVision, I didn't do this intentionally. It sort of just happened organically and it's one of the best things I've ever done. If I were to point at my career and be like, 'When was I a genius?' This was one of the moments. It was when I assigned the episodes to the different writers, they all had to become experts in their sitcom era, but they also had to write their own theme song. And then when they came in for the table read, they had to sing it. And it was so fun. And everybody looked forward to it so much, and it was so great for morale. They really dug in, you know, they weren't just like 'la la la' like they had to make a song. 

And so then of course the Lopezes were hired and they are professionals. And what we wrote went away because it should go away. But it was just so much of what screenwriting is: communicating to your collaborators. It is indicating tone, vibe, heart, everything to your collaborators. The fact that the writers on WandaVision put their love into these songs, I believe that's part of what made that show great. 

That was so satisfying and so fruitful in that show that when we were approaching the Agatha show, I had a list of must-haves, and one of them was musical numbers of some kind, like it just was MUSIC in all caps. It was so necessary. It was such a constant point of conversation. It's so hard to talk about without spoiling things…it just became sort of like a baseline to the show.

And so we did do some writing of the lyrics because it was necessary in order to shape the plot. And then again, when the Lopezes came in, all of our lyrics went away and they wrote the songs, but it was fundamental. The short answer to your question is my approach to the music in the show is as plot and is part of the bones of the show.

SCRIPT Magazine: It's just interesting to consider because you’ve made it integral. And it's always interesting to try to figure out, like where that balance is. Right? You think of Casablanca without “As Time Goes By” and it's like it all falls apart and you always wonder where that comes into the process. But I want to ask: what are the top qualities you think a writer needs to go sit down in a room to work at this level and produce good work on a show like this or any show?

Jac Schaeffer: I have so much to say about that. I've worked with such wonderful writers and I love them so much. I can't speak to any room. I can only speak to how my room is run. And my prerequisite prerequisites for writers who work with me are first, they have to be kind, respectful humans. That's my number one.

I like to sort of assemble rooms like a toolbox. So each chair has a utility. I don't want all the same people I need certain perspectives, certain lived experiences, and then I need certain expertise. 

For the WandaVision room, for example, Megan McDonnell wrote her thesis on The Twilight Zone, and I pretty much hired her the second I learned that. That's one of the ways I hire. 

But then I think to do the work in the room, I think it's two things. You have to be an idea machine. You have to be able to generate ideas and not be precious about them. And then I think you have to mind what's happening with the showrunner. Like, what are they sparking to? Where are they going? What's the path they're blazing and get on that path with them. I think it's all right to have dissenting opinions, and it's all right to poke holes. But you have to be really careful with that because momentum is what is precious in a writers' room. And and you can't obstruct that too much.

SCRIPT Magazine: As you look back on the first two episodes, writing and directing Agatha All Along, if there's one writing lesson that you took away more than any anything else and what would that be?

Jac Schaeffer: This is a small one, but transitions. I think very visually and I think so much about performance and I think a lot about tone and pacing. But transitions surprise me every time. On the pilot, we had more room to plan those, and it was necessary for the style of the pilot. And so my DP, Caleb Heyman, came up with a lot of the transitions and they were great. And then we lost some of that focus on 102, because we had so many more performers and so many more sets and so much more story burden. It's a little thing, but it's very indicative of true visual storytelling and true visual writing if you're thinking about that piece as well. I don't know. Is that not a good enough answer? It's true…

SCRIPT Magazine: No it is. It is a great. I teach screenwriting classes, and transitions are something I always try to tell people they need to be thinking about. You can tell early work of directors when the transitions are just fades to black and fades back in because they’ve never thought about the transition from the time they wrote it to the time they filmed it. They never thought about how they were going to get from A to B at all.

Jac Schaeffer: One of our directors, Rachel Goldberg, is excellent at transitions, and I learned a lot from her with that.

SCRIPT Magazine: It's one of those things that you just don't think about. And, yeah, highlighting that's always, always great. Thank you so much for your time.

Jac Schaeffer: These are my favorite conversations. And my only regret is that I can't fully talk to you about the rest of the show, so maybe another time.

Agatha All Along airs on Disney+ on Thursdays through October 31st.

Bryan Young is a filmmaker, writer, and teacher. His latest short film, The Lost Boys, is currently on the festival circuit and has won numerous awards. You can learn more about him at his website.