As the Netflix series returns, Vanity Fair presents us the true story of the 90s sitcom’s Salem Saberhagen: an indelible character brought to life through a combination of puppetry, animatronics, and a rotating cast of fussy felines.
Melissa Joan Hart as Sabrina, talks with Salem the cat in the 7th season of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. From Allstar Picture Library/Alamy.
Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina bears some resemblance to Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the series that enjoyed a 163-episode run, on ABC and then the WB in the U.S. and on Nickelodeon UK and CITV in the U.K., from 1996 to 2003.
Both were derived from the Archie spin-off comic-book series launched in 1971. Both center on the character of Sabrina, a witchy blonde teen who acquires magical powers on her sixteenth birthday.
But one is moody and murky where the other was mirthful; black magic compared to cheerful technicolor. Nowhere is this more evident than in each show’s treatment of Salem the cat.
On the Netflix series, which returns with nine new episodes April 5, Salem—played by a squad of cats trained by Ian Doig—has a supporting and so-far silent role as Sabrina’s familiar spirit. But on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Salem was one of the show’s stars and main attractions: a sardonic, talking cat, realized by a cadre of artists and experts through a combination of old-fashioned puppetry, animatronics, and the training and wrangling of several real cats—not to mention surely some of the finest feline-centric writing ever seen on television. The show’s wardrobe department was also tasked with fashioning Salem’s outfits, including several tuxedos.
According to the show’s lore, Salem Saberhagen was a hundreds-year-old warlock, sentenced to spend 100 years trapped in the body of a black American shorthair (though he was an orange tabby in the original comics) and stripped of his magical powers as punishment for attempted world domination. When not moaning about his fate or his fur-ball medicine, Salem reads The Economist, plays Risk, and poses as a woman on the Internet (“I like the attention”). He does a smooth rendition of “Witchcraft,” but has also developed a more cat-like appreciation for getting scratched behind the ears.
The character was the recipient of piles of adoring viewer fan mail and three consecutive Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards for Favorite Animal Star. Melissa Joan Hart (Clarissa Explains It All), who played Sabrina and co-produced the show, considered keeping a black sock in her pocket to wield as a puppet when fielding endless Salem-related enquiries in public. One crew member conveyed his impression that one of the show’s human stars was jealous of the attention lavished on the cat.
“That show owned a generation of, particularly, girls, you know?” said Nick Bakay, a Sabrina the Teenage Witch writer who also voiced Salem. “It’s the wish fulfillment of this talking cat. What teenager doesn’t want that hanging out in their room? A cat you can confide in?”
Salem in Netflix's *Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. By Diyah Pera/Netflix.
Bakay’s tones were dry as leftover kibble and well-suited to lines like “The sound of the can opener is the only thing that makes me feel truly alive.” They added a welcome wryness to the show’s laugh-tracked, family-friendly fare.
“It’s that weird thing where animals and puppets can kind of get away with murder,” said Bakay, who also voiced voiced Norbert in Nickelodeon's Angry Beavers. “Everyone else has to keep their act a little bit cleaner. The cat was very much the beneficiary of all those sort of little sideways pitches that might not have made it in if they were delivered from a human.”
As Bakay also pointed out, the character was inherently funny. “The great thing about the character is he’s a power madman who’s been consigned to live as a cat, as punishment for trying to take over the world. So, you know, that formula right there, it’s just hilarious. He’s gone from world domination to staring at a piece of lint floating by, on a pillow in a teenage girl’s bedroom. The bitterness is hilarious.”
Network executives were initially dubious about the Salem puppet, built out of foam rubber and rabbit fur by animal fabricator and puppeteer Jim Boulden for the show’s first season. Verisimilitude was not its strong point.
“ABC did not love the animatronic cat,” said Bakay. “And I get it: it’s not like it was going to fool anyone. But I think that it was part of the charm of the show—quaint, old-school practical magic and weird cat puppets. And for some reason, it kind of worked.”
There were two main animatronic Salem puppets: one fashioned in a sitting-up position, the other in a lying-down position. Both were operated by multiple puppeteers, two of whom were stationed comfortably off-set: Thom Fountain controlled the mouth movements, in sync with Bakay’s live voice performance, while Jim Greenall, who’d also designed the puppet’s mechanical components, controlled the ear and tail movements via remote control.
Mauri Bernstein was the puppeteer hidden on set, controlling Salem’s head and body movements. Her time on the show was spent mostly behind tables, beneath the sofa, or under Sabrina’s bed, with her arm over her head. “I had to go for massages with some regularity,” Bernstein told Vanity Fair, “to maintain the flexibility to get squished into various places.”
For a while, the trio was uncertain about whether Salem ought to behave in a more naturalistic or a more cartoonish fashion. “I think ultimately we came up with sort of something in the middle,” said Bernstein, “where he was definitely a comedy character, rooted in actual, literal cat behavior, but not limited to it.”
Eventually, the three puppeteers’ disparate efforts, plus Bakay’s live line-reads, synced up to form one cohesive feline performance. “We got it to the place where Salem worked as a unified whole,” said Bernstein. As she noted, a lot of younger viewers were indeed convinced Salem was entirely real. They would write in to the show: “How did you get it to talk?!”
The Salem puppet. By Bob D'Amico/ABC/Getty Images.
Having actual cats on set helped inform the realism of the puppeteers’ performances. Three main cats would typically play Salem over the course of any given episode, with several taking the role over the show’s run. They were wrangled and trained by a team led by Cathy Pittman, who scouted animals with “star quality” from animal shelters.
“We usually want the ones that nobody wants, the ones that are high energy, the ones that are outgoing,” said Pittman. “That’s why they end up in the pound. We channel that energy into training.”
With a special cat-food mixture as an enticement and reward—“kitty crack,” Pittman calls it—the cats would do pretty much anything they were called upon to do, from turning on a record player to riding an elephant to “driving” a toy Ferrari. One stunt that particularly impressed the cast and crew was Salem, wearing a fireman’s hat and coat, driving from one set to the other in a fire truck (“This is Red Eagle to squad leader,” he says) and climbing up the truck’s ladder to the kitchen counter before positioning himself before an open flame.
According to Hart, the set would reek of cat food by the end of a season. Pittman didn’t notice. “I’d been an animal trainer for a long time,” she explained. “It’s like dirty diapers to a parent.”
Different cats had different fortes. Witch was the agile action star who handled the most fur-raising stunts, while also relishing off-camera cuddles with Hart. There was a go-to crazy cat who was in fact named Salem, with the manic, volatile quality of a young Pacino. Elvis was the mellow one, exuding something like Buster Keaton’s stoicism in the face of chaos. “He would sit where he was supposed to sit,” said Bakay.
But it was the self-assured Warlock who had Hollywood in his sights, going on to roles in films as diverse as Scary Movie 2, The Prestige, and Team America: World Police. “He was a phenomenal cat,” said Pittman. “He loved the work.”
When they weren’t required on set, the cats hung out in their own trailer on the lot.
"I'm so happy, I could plotz!"
There were also a couple of stuffed, non-animatronic cats on Sabrina. They were used primarily as stand-ins during scene blocking and rehearsals, but were occasionally employed on camera if a scene required a fleeting Salem-shaped blur to shoot past the camera. They were named “Stuffy.”
Today, the original Salem puppet resides in Jim Boulden’s Camino Ranchero animal fabrication studio, frozen forever in mute mid-meow. Boulden still receives the occasional Salem-related fan mail, but screen work for sort-of, not-really convincing faux animals has dried up considerably. “The digital revolution replaced puppeteers like me,” said Boulden. “There’s just no funding for this kind of work anymore.”
The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina series creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa has kept Salem quiet so far, though he’s been careful not to suggest that the character will never speak in the future.
“I was curious about what they were going to do about that,” said Bakay. “I was, you know, I have to admit, kind of relieved that they went the way they did.” Boulden sounded a little less certain: “Sabrina the Teenage Witch was a lighthearted romp of a show. The new version? Not so much.”
Aguirre-Sacasa has also hinted at the possibility of an episode delving into the backstory of the character.
Ultimately, though, it’s clear the Netflix series has no place for the older show’s particular brand of television magic, or the chemistry its Salem and Sabrina shared—not least because the new Sabrina, Kiernan Shipka, is allergic to cats. “I’m fine being in the same room as Salem,” she has said, “as long as I’m not continuously petting and touching him. He’s fine.”
Sit back and enjoy these classic Salem Saberhagen moments from Sabrina the Teenage Witch!:
More Nick: Sabrina the Teenage Witch | Intros with Lyrics | NickSplat | Nickelodeon UK!
Additional sources: Quote Catalog, Google.co.uk.
Follow NickALive! on Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, via RSS, on Instagram, and/or Facebook for the latest Nickelodeon UK and NickRewind News and Highlights!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Have your say by leaving a comment below! NickALive! welcomes friendly and respectful comments. Please familiarize with the blog's Comment Policy before commenting. All new comments are moderated and won't appear straight away.