From show creator/writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, the Netflix original series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina follows Sabrina Spellman (Kiernan Shipka), the magical 16-year-old half-witch/half-mortal who feels conflicted about both sides of her nature. While Sabrina is on her own personal journey of discovering what she stands for and where she belongs, her aunts Hilda (Lucy Davis) and Zelda (Miranda Otto), warlock cousin Ambrose (Chance Perdomo), high priest Father Blackwood (Richard Coyle), the Devil's handmaiden Madam Satan (Michelle Gomez), human boyfriend Harvey (Ross Lynch), and even her familiar, Salem the cat, are each trying to influence her, in their own way.

During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa talked about how Sabrina Spellman went from being a potential character in Season 2 of The CW’s Riverdale to having her own TV series, whether there’s still a chance for a cross-over, the dark themes they’re getting to explore, the social issues that are present in the story, delving into issues of identity for young people, whether Salem the cat will ever talk on the series, and how he’d feel about a Melissa Joan Hart (who played Sabrina Spellman on the ‘90s sitcom, Sabrina the Teenage Witch) cameo.

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Image via Netflix

Collider:  I absolutely love this show!

ROBERTO AGUIRRE-SACASA:  Oh, I’m so happy! That’s great. I’m happy to hear that.

You’ve previously talked about how Sabrina Spellman was originally set to join the cast of Riverdale, at the end of that show’s first season, and she would have been the antagonist on that show, as it leaned more into horror. So, how deep did you actually get into planning that, and when did you realize that she would just be more suited to her own series?

AGUIRRE-SACASA:  The first season of a television show is like a battleground. You’re trying to figure out the show while it’s a runaway freight train. We were nearing the end of Season 1 of Riverdale, before Riverdale exploded, and we were trying to think of a cliffhanger that would guarantee that we got a Season 2. The plan had been to bring in Veronica’s father as a villain, but then it was like, “Well, is that a big enough deal?” So, I talked to (executive producer) Greg [Berlanti] and he said, “What about Sabrina? I think that would mean more to the audience.” And I said, “Yeah, I think you’re right.” The question became, would we introduce Sabrina as a supernatural character, or would we have to do a non-supernatural version of Sabrina, like for instance, say that she’s a cult member or a practicing pagan, but not a supernatural witch. We had those conversations, but it felt like we ran out of time to have either Veronica’s father or Sabrina. And then, we landed on the idea of Archie’s dad getting shot, as a cliffhanger, and we tabled the Sabrina idea. When we returned to it, it was after Riverdale had exploded on Netflix, and it felt like maybe this wasn’t necessarily a part of Riverdale, but that it’s a spin-off. So, it was a conversation over many weeks and months.

If Riverdale is more of the crime and pulp of it all, and Sabrina is now the horror and magic, will it be too much of a challenge to ever have a cross-over between the two series?

AGUIRRE-SACASA:  I’m a big fan of cross-overs, in comic books and on shows, so I feel like, where there’s a will, there’s a way. I think it would probably be easier if maybe the Riverdale kids go to Greendale. On a dare, they could go spend the night in a haunted house. But I could also see the universe where Sabrina is like, “I want to be mortal. I don’t want to be a witch. I’m gonna transfer to this school, Riverdale High, where everything is surely gonna be normal and I’ll be a normal kid.” But little does Sabrina know that Riverdale High is a lot darker and crazier than Baxter High. So, I think there is definitely a way to do it, and my hope is that one day we get a chance to do it.

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Image via Netflix

What are you most enjoying about the Sabrina that we get to see in this series and the journey that you can take her on, now that she is in her own world?

AGUIRRE-SACASA:  One of the constant sources of what challenges me on Riverdale is that no matter what, the episode of television has to be 41 minutes and 40 seconds long, and there are so many characters on the show that I don’t always get to service them the way that I would like. One of the things that’s great about Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is that I have a little more room to play and a little more time to explore these characters, and we can probably get a little deeper into the horror and witch mythology on Netflix than we might have been able to on broadcast. There are some pretty dark themes. We have an episode that’s all about cannibalism. We do have the devil popping up, here and there, and stuff like that. So, it can probably be truer to the original vision. There would have been advantages to it being a direct spin-off, but there are definitely some major pluses of it being its own thing.

There are definitely some interesting overtones with this subject matter, when it comes to wanting to make your own choices, especially when you’re a 16-year-old young woman. That aspect of it feels less supernatural and more real-world, with what we’re currently seeing going on around us.

AGUIRRE-SACASA:  No kidding, right?!

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Image via Netflix

Did you realize just how much you’d be able to use this series as a metaphor for so many things?

AGUIRRE-SACASA:  It’s funny, originally, we were going to set this series in the 1960s, like the comic book is. Sabrina first debuted in 1967, and when I pitched the show to Netflix, I said that I wanted to do it in the ‘60s. Cindy Holland (VP of Content Acquisition for Original Series) said, “Here’s the thing, everything you want to talk about and every social issue you want to explore is happening right now. You don’t need to go to the 1960s to talk about civil rights, a woman’s rights, homophobia or racism. All of that is happening, right now.” And she was 100% right. We took the style and the trappings of the period, just because they’re cool aesthetically, but it’s more timeless, like Riverdale. It allowed us to pick and choose. But, yeah, it’s definitely in dialogue with national themes, and problems that a lot of young women are wrestling with. Sabrina’s struggle is real.

The series also gives you a chance to explore identity through characters like Ambrose (Chance Perdomo) and Susie (Lachlan Watson). What most excites you about the opportunity to have non-binary and pan-sexual representation on this series, and what have those character conversations been like with the actors?

AGUIRRE-SACASA:  When we started talking about Sabrina, and when you talk about any television show now, especially youth shows, it’s so important for young people to see themselves on screen, or to see a version of their story and their journey on screen. No two people have the same journey, but we definitely wanted to include as many kinds of diverse characters and characters of different orientation on the show as we could. We definitely wanted to tell a story about transgender youth, and we worked with GLAAD and a couple of other different organizations. We went out and started meeting with and auditioning actors who identified as queer, identified as non-binary, and identified as transgender, and one of the things we said was, “Here’s a story we’re thinking about telling, which is a character journey that we’re thinking about going on. It’s a horror show, so there are gonna be some good things and some bad things that happen. But it’s gonna ultimately be a positive journey for this character.” I was very honest with the actors that I met. Lachlan, who plays Susie, is a star and is completely up for this adventure, and has quite honestly educated me a lot. We talk about Susie’s storyline, and Lachlan has helped make it a more authentic journey. We have a trans writer in the writers’ room, who’s also helped make the journey more authentic. I think there is a responsibility, when you’re doing a youth show about young people, to say, “Hey, everyone can be part of this story. Everyone can live in this town. Everyone is going through something.” So, that’s how it all started.

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Image via Netflix

People very much identify the character of Sabrina Spellman with Salem, her cat. How did you decide the way you wanted to represent Salem in this series? Will we ever hear him talk, or will we definitely not ever hear him talk?

AGUIRRE-SACASA:  Well, I always say, “Never say never about anything.” When I wrote Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, the comic book, I wasn’t gonna have Salem talk, and within two pages, Salem was talking. I get a lot of conversations about Salem, in this show, because one of the most iconic things from the ‘90s show, besides Melissa Joan Hart, was Salem’s dry sense of humor, his one-liners, and his campy delivery. It felt like we really wanted to be different, tonally, so we thought, at least at first, that Salem shouldn’t do a lot of talking. Now, that doesn’t mean that he’s never gonna talk. That doesn’t mean we’re not gonna see him in his goblin form again. He does talk a little bit in his goblin form. For the moment, there’s a physic connection between him and Sabrina, which is how they communicate, quite hilariously, in my opinion.

Since you’ve done some brilliant casting on both Riverdale and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, will we ever see a cameo from Melissa Joan Hart?

AGUIRRE-SACASA:  I’m completely open to that.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is available to stream at Netflix on October 26th.