Malachi Barton, left, and Malina Pauli Weissman in 'Coven Academy.' Disney/David Astorga Logo text Disney‘s new supernatural series Coven Academy brings witches and warlocks to the small screen just ahead of Halloween.
The New Olreans-set series, created by Tim Federle (High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, the upcoming Romy and Michele sequel), follows “three teenage witches and their dangerously charming warlock peers at an elite magic boarding school where power is currency, secrets are lethal and attraction is a liability. Caught between ancient supernatural wars and forbidden love interests, the coven must decide how far they’re willing to go to protect their city — and themselves,” according to the official logline.
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The show stars Malina Pauli Weissman (A Series of Unfortunate Events) as Briar, a fiercely independent New Yorker who discovers she’s a witch; Malachi Barton (Camp Rock 3, Zombies 4: Dawn of the Vampires) as Jake, a magnetic warlock with a dangerous edge; Jordan Leftwich (The Family Switch) as Sasha, a deeply empathic student who can read minds; Ora Duplass (Their Town) as Tegan, an irreverent time-bending witch; Louis Thresher (Boarders) as Ollie, a hungry, newly turned vampire; and Tiffani Thiessen (White Collar, 90210) as Miss Graves, the formidable and glamorous head of the school. The series also boasts special guest star Devon Sawa (Hacks) as Mr. Cole, a brilliant and charismatic warlock professor, along with recurring cast members Swayam Bhatia, Brendon Tremblay, Keegan Connor Tracy, BJ Harrison and Nathaniel Logan McIntyre.
The show is set to premiere Oct. 1 on Freeform, with the full season available the next day on Disney+, Hulu and Freeform on Demand.
Ahead of its debut, Federle chatted with The Hollywood Reporter about the genesis of the idea, the show’s format (shorter episodes), how he hopes to fill a YA void, and the talents of his young cast.
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Where did the idea for Coven Academy come from?
I was a ’90s kid who was obsessed with that CW era — Charmed, Dawson’s Creek — when it was appointment TV. I’ve always wanted to tell a story in this space. I had dinner with the president of [Disney Kids & Family], Ayo Davis, two summers ago. We were thinking about what was next after the High School Musical reboot I did. Ayo had a real desire to play with format, try something maybe in a little shorter format, but propulsive, and something we could really invest in.
I always wanted to do something with witches. I just love that space and I love the opportunity of magic. And so it started from a very organic dinner and then probably because it wasn’t IP and I didn’t have the sort of stakeholders or the fan expectation of a title that comes with momentum — but also pressure — this one was really easy to write. I wrote the first draft of the pilot in like a night. I literally went home from that dinner and wrote it, and then it was off to the races.
From left: Jordan Leftwich, Malina Pauli Weissman and Ora Duplass in Coven Academy. Disney/David Astorga There are a few things you touched on that I wanted to ask you about. First of all, the episodes are shorter, ranging from 10 minutes to 22 minutes at the most. Can you talk more about that?
It’s not quite a K-drama and it’s also not an hour long. I ran the show with Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer, who came up through Smallville and Shadow Hunters. So in some ways our writers’ room itself — and the directors we hired‚ it was an all-female-director lineup in season one; I directed the pilot and then it was all women after me — we all come from, frankly, traditional TV backgrounds. We wanted to take that traditional storytelling muscle, which arcs out over five-plus hours in season one, but then try something that felt more chapter-based, with hopefully just as many arcs, just as many payoffs, just as many plot twists. But where you might typically break for a commercial on cable, we just sort of end the chapter and then start right back up. So what I’m ultimately hoping is that the experience itself is very bingeable.
I think there could easily be a misperception that this was geared towards some prototypical short-attention-span generation, which I actually don’t believe. I think this generation actually will dive into any story in a deep way if they love it, which is why everything from Grey’s Anatomy to Friends is still trending. I think they want to spend time with characters they love and go deep into their lives, and I think we still try to do that with Coven Academy. In an era when IP tends to really work, we’re taking a swing with something that isn’t IP and trying something new to say, does this work? Because it’s hard to break through. It’s hard to get attention, and I really respect and appreciate Disney for taking this risk because it’s not a book, it’s not a movie. It wasn’t your mom’s favorite TV show. I think it is an amalgam of a lot of those elements.
I think it’s very reminiscent of those types of shows, but it’s new, and it’s a new piece of lore, and I hope it gets rebooted in 20 years.
Was it a conscious decision to have all female directors apart from you?
Yeah, totally. It’s a show about witches, though the warlocks and vampires and male figures have a strong presence and strong stories as well. We did this on season three of High School Musical. That was an all-female director lineup, and I really wanted the women in the show and the young women in the show — a couple of whom, Ora and Jordan, it’s their first series regular role and really their first like giant thing — I wanted it to be exactly what it should be, which is absolutely great female filmmakers who are female to tell these stories from a really confident point of view that that only they could and only they can.
You’ve got a great cast, including Malachi Barton, who’s the hottest thing going among the tween set right now, along with Malina Pauli Weissman in the starring role. How did you land on casting them?
I tend to really feel like I’m casting the person as much as I am casting the artist, and I have this awareness that if we’re going to send these folks away to Vancouver for three months, they’re going to be away from their families, I try to see the future and say, who is the group of people who’s going to keep each other laughing and humbled and having fun throughout the difficulty of discovering a first season?
The role of Briar is central. She’s sort of the snarky heart of the show, and I knew it needed to be somebody who carried with her a genuine authenticity where she could play to a lot of different ages, and if you feel like a witch show isn’t for you, or if you feel like, wait, like a school for magic, isn’t that a little corny, she’s the character who allows you to verbalize that by saying like, are you kidding me? A lot of people auditioned for this, like hundreds of young women, probably thousands, and when Malina auditioned, she was like hunched over, sitting on a stool, not making eye contact with the camera, her hair wasn’t done. She was so — I hate this word — real. She’s so authentic, and because I was not the target audience for A Series of Unfortunate Events, I did not know that’s what many audience members know her from. She was just this total discovery to me.
For Malachi, I’d gotten a heads-up that there was this young man whose star was really rising, but I was basically told by Disney, you don’t have to cast him, you should just check him out and see if he’ll audition. And he auditioned for Jake, which originally was a much smaller role, and Malachi, who has chemistry with a door, was so undeniable. It was very clear we were sort of getting Malachi at a moment when he was just about to truly burst like a firework, and he — and Malina — were the like tried-and-true anchors of the younger cast because this kid literally grew up on sets.
You also have Gen X icons Tiffani Thiessen and Devon Sawa as the more grown-up elements of the cast.
We had this mix of young people with an audience, young people who I think are going to explode onto the scene, and then we kept looking at it and being like, “I feel like there’s a Gen X box mix missing.” Some of these shows like Riverdale, Sterling Point, they do this beautiful job of an adult “B” story. Certainly, my friends with kids, they’re going to watch and go, “Oh my God, I had Devin Sawa’s poster on my bedroom growing up.” Now he and Tiffany are these adult anchors, and what’s kind of miraculous about them is they’re such kind people and they’ve been through so much in the business. I watched on set as Devin would talk to Malachi about a version of, “I didn’t have social media when I was a kid and I was becoming famous and here are my thoughts,” and it wasn’t quite mentorship or tips or lessons. It was just this organic thing that for me made me like such a proud papa. A lot of showrunning and creating to me is about like hosting a party and then stepping back and letting the conversation happen, and this cast really had that conversation.
Tiffani Thiessen in Coven Academy. Disney/David Astorga Why did you decide to set the show in New Orleans?
New Orleans is sort of like a magic mecca, though in some ways I think we’re doing our own sort of slightly magical, out-of-time, out-of-place version of New Orleans. That felt like a right place to play in, but in some ways it has a sort of Harry Potter-ish boarding school but in Louisiana.
Is there anything else you’d like to share about the show?
Disney has this extraordinary sort of thing which is, there’s the preschool audience, and there’s this period when I feel like the audience grows up with us and they are obsessed through Descendants and Zombies, and they’re going to the [Worlds Collide] tour that some of the Coven Academy cast members [Barton and Bhatia] are on right now, to see the Descendants and Zombies and Camp Rock on tour. And then there’s this period that I think is a white space for Disney, which is like teenagers where maybe there’s a moment — I used to write novels for kids and we would lose boys at age 12; you’d lose boys to like Roblox and Minecraft and, as we know with literacy rates, you don’t always get them back. Then there’s this leap period where I think kids get to college now and you’re homesick and you’re nostalgic and maybe with your friends you watch Toy Story 5 and you sort of are a Disney kid again. I am hopeful and what I see is the opportunity, which is I really believe that Disney and Hulu should hang on to that audience, and I feel in the hallways the desire to invest in that audience and say grow up with us.
I said this to Malachi Barton. You know, he has a lot of choices these days. I think a lot of people come to him with [roles], and I was like, I want this to be your first role, really, that gets a little grittier, gets a little darker, and that your audience can grow up with you a little bit. And the minute I said that, I saw him really lock in and lock into a different level as a performer.
I think the big the question here is, will this audience grow up with us and stay with the stories we’re telling? And I hope they do, because I think there’s like thousands of stories to tell. I remember with the High School Musical reboot, when an episode of that show would end, the next thing that would be recommended on the platform was like a Disney Channel movie from the ’90s. I would like to see the service grow in such a way that the next thing that’s recommended after Coven Academy is a YA show that’s unapologetically YA, and I think we’re just at the beginning of that, and now we do what we always do. We make the thing, we hold our breath, and we hope for magic.
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Federle created Coven Academy and serves as executive producer alongside Swimmer, Slavkin, Amanda Row and Bronwyn North-Reist. The show is produced by Federle’s Chorus Boy Productions in association with Disney Kids & Family.
Watch the digital teaser trailer, featuring Olivia Rodrigo’s hit song “Brutal,” below.
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