Vinessa Shaw, best known for playing Allison in “Hocus Pocus,” had no idea 25 years ago the film would become one of the most iconic Halloween movies of all time.
“It was actually a flop when it came out,” Shaw told Page Six, adding that the film was released in July with the hopes of it becoming a summer blockbuster. “[Bette Midler] had gotten an Oscar for her work and had all these prestigious things that she’d been doing and then she decides to do this movie which in the critics’ eyes, it was just appalling. They were just thinking, ‘How could she do this?’”
But Midler got the last laugh. This October, Freeform is set to air “Hocus Pocus” 28 times.
Shaw, 42, was a teenager when she first auditioned for “Hocus Pocus,” saying she felt like a “kid at a candy shop” walking down the animated streets of the Disney lot.
Her first audition was with director Kenny Ortega, who called her back in for a chemistry read with two actors who were auditioning to play her love interest, Max.
“It was Omri Katz and then there was supposed to be another person named Leonardo DiCaprio,” she said.
DiCaprio didn’t end up doing the chemistry read and went on to star in “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” but Shaw had met DiCaprio after working on a TV show with his pal Tobey Maguire. “The world of young actors was really small back then so everyone knew each other. If you met them once, you saw them a million times after that because the circles were very small. So I knew he was coming in to possibly audition, but I think he had bigger fish to fry.”
Katz eventually was cast as Max, the teenage virgin who accidentally brings back three evil witches, and Thora Birch as his younger sister Dani.
“Thora will always be like a sister to me,” Shaw said. “She’s so great and being able to find people who have kind of survived a young actor’s world and made it through to the other side, you kind of want to glom onto. She’s such a real person and is always herself. I always find that refreshing.”
When it comes to on-set stories, some of Shaw’s most vivid memories were working with the many different cats that portrayed Thackery Binx.
“I think there [were] like over 60-something cats that they used for this movie,” Shaw explained. “I remember going back and seeing this wall of cats literally in their cages, ready to perform, because you can only teach a cat one or two tricks each … I really marveled at the animal trainers who got these cats to do their one trick.”
She continued, “There was one scene where I’m opening up the [spell] book, and the cat has to jump on it and close the book. We had to do that one over and over again because the cat didn’t jump in the right place or the timing was bad. I just remember us repeating that line again over and over again feeling like it was never going to end.”
Twenty-five years later, Shaw is still acting and welcomed her first child in March, a baby boy named Jack.
And although Shaw has no inside scoop about the “Hocus Pocus” remake reportedly in the works at Disney Channel, she would happily be a part of it.
“I would do it in a heartbeat because I have nothing but good memories of it,” she told us. “There would be nothing better than to be able to give that gift again.”
Where the cast of “Hocus Pocus” is 25 years later:
