[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC, live from the WNYC studios in SoHo. I'm Alison Stewart. Thanks for spending your day with us. Hey, we spent the month reading our October Get Lit with All Of It book club selection, and now, it is time to talk about it. I will be in conversation with author Dinaw Mengestu tomorrow evening at the New York Public Library Stavros Niarchos branch. We'll be discussing his novel Someone Like Us. Plus, we have a really great musical guest. Angélique Kidjo will be there. Things kick off tomorrow at 6:00 PM. Tickets are free, but the event is almost sold out.

To reserve your seats, head to wnyc.org/getlit. Seating is first come, first serve. Door was open at 5:30. Again, to get your tickets, there are very few left, or you can watch via livestream. Go to wnyc.org/getlit. We will see you tomorrow night. Now, let's get this hour started with Sasheer Zamata. Halloween is coming up, which means witches. Bust out your pointy hats and broomsticks. Now is the time to be gathering your coven.

According to the Marvel show, Agatha All Along, the spiritual successor to the 2021 series WandaVision, if you want to walk the witch's trail, your coven needs a green witch, a divination witch, a protection witch, and of course, a potions witch to whip up powerful brews in the service of your sisterhood. In the show, Jennifer Kale is potions witch, but she lost all her powers. Instead of eye of newt and toe of frog, she resigns herself to brewing up skincare regimens.

That is, until Agatha Harkness invites her on a journey to regain her power. Jennifer Kale is played by none other than Sasheer Zamata, I keep doing that, who joins us now. Hi, Sasheer.

Sasheer Zamata: Hi. Yes, Sasheer Zamata. My cousins used to be like, "Zamata, Zamato." Just because everyone can't figure out which pronunciation it is.

Alison Stewart: You and Nicole are in Friends in my Head on Wednesday. When that podcast drops, every Wednesday, I listen with y'all, I can't believe--

Sasheer Zamata: I love that.

Alison Stewart: I'll get that last name right. Before we head into the show and talk about it, we're up coming up on Halloween. Are you a Halloween person? Do you do Halloween?

Sasheer Zamata: I'm actually not really. I feel like any costume I have or event I do is like last minute. I'm like, "I guess I'll just be a ghost." I don't know. I don't prepare for it. I wonder if because I wear costumes for work all the time, I don't really think of wearing costumes in the real world. Yes, it kind of just misses me every year.

Alison Stewart: All right, we'll move right onto the show. Jennifer Kale, she's a potions expert. When we meet her, her power is gone. We find out why, but first, she's in trouble, but she's found this niche in skincare. What is it about skincare that allows her to hold on to a little bit of her power?

Sasheer Zamata: I think it's kind of like being a guru of some sort, being some sort of like self-care, healthy guru that people look to for answers. In the show people are commenting like, "Oh, her skin regimen is so great and this and that." I think she likes being able to use her knowledge of science, chemistry, and stuff to create things that are supposed to help people. You can tell that, at some point, in her life, she kind of stopped caring about helping people. She's a snake oil salesman now at this point when we meet her.

I think it's because she doesn't have her powers. She's felt really outcast and left behind by the witch community. I think that creates a lot of trust issues and also trust with herself. Yes, she's kind of in this place, where she's kind of like, "Whatever, I'm here for money."

Alison Stewart: The first exhibit, somebody's going to have a lawsuit against her.

Sasheer Zamata: Exactly. People have literally gotten burned from her products. I think seeing the growth of Jennifer's journey in the show is really beautiful to me and I hope people who are watching the show are getting a kick out of it too because she starts off very selfish and self-serving and then eventually has to learn how to navigate this adventure with a team, with a whole covenant of people.

Alison Stewart: Yes, they're traveling the witch's road in search of their powers, but aside from her powers being missing, what do you think Jennifer is missing?

Sasheer Zamata: Confidence. I think a lot of confidence in herself. I think her core has been shaken. She really leaned on her powers. In her trial, she was like, "I don't know how to be able to save everyone if I don't have my powers." Really, her knowledge is what saved everybody. She's had that the whole time. No one could take her knowledge, and I think her realizing that is also part of her trial and her journey is realizing that she does actually have this power, even if she doesn't have the actual magic in her.

Alison Stewart: What kind of research or preparation did you do to understand the source material for Agatha All Along? It's comic books as part of it.

Sasheer Zamata: Yes. Jennifer Kale is in the comics and the show is a spinoff of WandaVision, so I watched WandaVision again. I watched it when it came out. It's really cool to be in a show like this because everybody else is also really nerdy about witch culture. We're trading articles with each other and books and readings. We're just excited to see, like, "Oh, you learned this. Oh, I didn't even know that." This piece of history is, it's history. We can somehow figure out how they put it in the show. They wanted Jennifer to have been a midwife at some point.

I'm reading about midwives and witches and how a lot of midwives were women of color and how they got labeled as witches in order to demonize the work that they were doing and kind of shift the focus to "male professionals" and having them be the ones who you go to when you're in emergency or when you're birthing. We kind of stepped away from the knowledge that gets passed down generation to generation. It's so interesting, and I felt really excited to be surrounded by people who were also excited about that information.

I was also doing that research already for my standup special. I have a special called The First Woman that is on Hulu and also has a lot of witchy elements to it. I was already doing research on witches just because I thought, the idea of a woman or a person being outcast or really the power that they possess on their own, that you can be so powerful that you intimidate people in a way that they want to remove you from society. That's really powerful. I was just already getting a kick out of reading books about it and researching it and then really just blended right into this Agatha journey, too.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Sasheer Zamata. She plays Jennifer Kale in Agatha All Along, and she does a whole bunch of other stuff. She's great in standup. Seth Meyer. You were on Seth Meyer and you said that you have a text chain with the other members of the group, with Patti LuPone, Kathryn Hahn, Joe Locke, Ali Ahn. First of all, how does that closeness that you all have manifest itself on the set?

Sasheer Zamata: Oh, it's really special. Everyone's so funny and really showed up to work, like wanting this to be the best production it could be, and it shows. Everyone really wanted to put all of their energy into it. Kathryn Hahn is also amazing, and the dedication she brought to this character really elevated the work for all of us, and it was just fun. Patti is such a wild card. She's always singing and making jokes.

Alison Stewart: Oh, she's so great.

Sasheer Zamata: She's so, so great. Yes. It really just felt truly special and kind of like summer camp. We shot this in Georgia from last January to June, and we just got had dinners together. We would have movie parties. It was just a really nice coven that we were creating, and we're still supporting each other. I saw Patti on Broadway recently, and I saw Joe on Broadway. We're still visiting each other and seeing each other, and it's really sweet. I hope we keep this connection for a long time because it feels so special.

Alison Stewart: What did you learn from--? I mean, she's truly a legend. Patti LuPone.

Sasheer Zamata: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Truly. What did you learn about life or about business from Patti LuPone? I'm curious.

Sasheer Zamata: Yes, I think I learned-- because she's obviously been working for so long. She really came to work with such a joy in her heart and in her energy, she was there to have fun, and she did, and we did, too. By proxy, by being around her. She really made a fun environment, and she really proves that you can do really, really good work while also having fun and showing up and getting joy out of what you're doing.

Alison Stewart: Yes, it's sort of interesting. There's sort of an intergenerational thing going on with the women in the show.

Sasheer Zamata: Yes.

Alison Stewart: I'm curious. How does it benefit the story to have an intergenerational coven? Then how did it benefit you?

Sasheer Zamata: I think it's nice to be able to work with people from different generations because you learn so much more. You get so many different stories. Their performance is storied because they've been performing in different ways over time. Also, same with people who are young. Joe was 19 when we shot this. Then we have people in their 70s, but we all felt like peers. It felt like this is our team, and I was learning from everybody. It's just so nice to be able to bring a group of people like that together because you're not alienating anybody. No one's left out.

We're highlighting everyone's strengths and weaknesses in the show, and I love that. The episode that aired last week, where it was talking about Patti's lapse, time, understanding, and continuity, it felt so nice to highlight because I think a lot of humans, even if they're not witches, experience that where they're having lapse of memory and whatnot. I think that's such a cool thing to highlight because we don't want to forget about those people. They've been through so much, and we can still learn so much from them.

Alison Stewart: In terms of feminist history and inherently feminist behavior, do you feel like there is something, I guess, feminist about witchcraft and witchery?

Sasheer Zamata: Yes. There's an element of sisterhood and relying on each other and learning from each other, working with your hands. I think there's a nice way to highlight being able to use each other as a community. It's like that very singular. It's like we are coming together to conjure this thing for a certain goal, or we're trading crafts and we're trading skills, and it feels very supportive and healthy, honestly. I think witchcraft and witches do feel very feminist and powerful.

Alison Stewart: There's really only one male character. It's Joe, as you mentioned, Joe Locke. He's this gay teenager that Agatha refers to sometimes as her pet. We're not going to give any spoilers, but he's central to story. He kind of takes a backseat and learns from you, from the women in the coven. What do you think that men or male-adjacent folks should learn from women like Jennifer and Agatha?

Sasheer Zamata: Ooh, I think men can learn-- I mean, I think men can learn. They could also be part of the coven. Being a part of the coven is really figuring out what you have that can benefit the group. We're a team. We're all bringing something. I'm bringing potions. Someone's bringing divination. Someone's bringing protection. We're all bringing something to the table. As long as you're more focused on how can we help the greater good, as opposed to how can I lead, or how can I be the top dog or how can I be the number one? I think that will serve you and the community very well.

Alison Stewart: At the beginning, we see Joe seeking out Agatha and her sort of mentoring him and his craft, and she gives him a hard time, but she throws credit where credit's due. Have you had any personal or professional mentors in your career?

Sasheer Zamata: Yes, I've had some really great ones. I shadowed a director, Mo Marable, on Woke, when I was on the show Woke on Hulu, and he was the EP director. He was so generous with his time and his knowledge, and I really appreciate it. I've had some really great comedians, kind of guide me in my early days in New York. Mike Birbiglia was really instrumental and taking me to shows and helping me with storytelling and whatnot. Chris Gethard, Seaton Smith, Wyatt Cenac.

Amy Schumer put me on my first TV jobs. I was on her sketch show Inside Amy Schumer, and in her movie I Feel Pretty. I feel really fortunate that I've been surrounded by people who are willing to help, and I've benefited from that immensely.

Alison Stewart: All right. As I mentioned, you have a podcast called Best Friends with Nicole Byer. Just my favorite. You've described her as your soulmate.

Sasheer Zamata: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What happens when you're with someone who you really feel a connection to?

Sasheer Zamata: It feels like magic. It really does. When we first met each other, we just clicked so quickly, and it was like, "Oh, this is a forever person. This feels right." I'm so fortunate that I've been able to be-- have a person in my life who does the same thing that I do. We've grown in our careers, we've grown in our lives, we've grown in our personal lives, and been through so many ups and downs, and she just gets it. There's a second hand that I don't have with anybody else. As we've been doing the podcast, we were learning that not everyone has that, which is so sad to me.

I want people to find their person, find their friendship, because of course, romantic partnership is so beneficial and lovely, but also you get so much from a platonic friendship that you can't get in any other aspect of your life. Yes, I feel very lucky that I have that.

Alison Stewart: On one of the recent episodes, you described having some work done in your home, and it really wasn't up to par.

Sasheer Zamata: Yes.

Alison Stewart: You described sanding your ground with the work that was done. It sounded like it took a little bit of courage on your part. When you're not playing a powerful witch, how do you prepare for the little day-to-day ways that you need to stand up for yourself?

Sasheer Zamata: Ooh. I talked to my therapist about it.

Alison Stewart: Good.

Sasheer Zamata: Talk to friends about it. Write it down, write it out. Like, what am I trying to say? What's the goal? I also think just getting older, I think a little less-- There's more confidence in myself and more, I don't know, caring less about what people think about me or what I'm saying because I'm not going to see them again or how do I care? That's what I say because this is the goal. If you have a bad day, so sorry, but you'll get over it. It's fine.

Alison Stewart: May I ask, how are you coping with the election stress?

Sasheer Zamata: I'm trying to manifest and think good thoughts and not catastrophize because it's really easy to go in that direction. Just trying to put positive words out into the universe of like, "This will go the way I want it to go." I feel really positive. Also, the people I'm talking to think the same way. I think it's scary because you see things online and there's very loud voices saying things that don't feel good. I'm trying to believe that maybe those are just a minority of loud voices as opposed to an actual representation of a whole population.

We'll see. I'm just trying to manifest and vote. I also voted. Sent my mail in my ballot. I did it. I'm trying to encourage other people to do it. Do it early.

Alison Stewart: There's a really funny thing on your Instagram that you did a couple of years ago about be prepared. Be prepared.

Sasheer Zamata: Yes. You don't want to be unprepared day of-- Yes, so make a plan now.

Alison Stewart: The final two episodes of Agatha All Along drop tomorrow. We know no spoiler rules. What can you tell us to prepare us for the final two episodes?

Sasheer Zamata: These episodes get crazier and crazier. More intense. The last two episodes are pretty intense. I think you'll expect to see a lot. I can't even really tell you what. I don't even know how to vaguely describe what's going to happen. It's like, it'll be a lot. I hope everyone's caught up because I'm sure the people will be talking about it a lot on the Internet once it comes out. Yes, I'm very excited about it. I'm really proud of this work, and I'm proud of what we created.

It's just a really cool show that exhibits sisterhood, camaraderie, witchiness, confidence, and all the things. I hope people relate to it and also see a bit of themselves in it.

Alison Stewart: To wrap back to my original question. I asked you about Halloween. You're like, "I'm not that into it," but you got to wear some great costumes.

Sasheer Zamata: Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: Do you have a favorite from Agatha All Along? You got to wear some awesome costumes.

Sasheer Zamata: I know, right? I really do love our '70s looks. My look was inspired by Donna Summer, Diana Ross. It was so cute. I like this flower crown and these fluffy bangs and this fluffy wig. It was just really fun to do. Yes, this whole show was so cool. I feel everyone in the creative departments were so, so good at their job, and we're just truly in a different world every episode. Yes, it was fun to play.

Alison Stewart: My guest has been Sasheer Zamata. She plays Jennifer Kale in the new Marvel series Agatha All Along. Thanks so much for joining us. I was a real pleasure to meet you.

Sasheer Zamata: Pleasure to meet you, too. Thank you for having me.