'Sabrina the Teenage Witch' actor recalls dodging gator's bite on set
'Sabrina' star recounts hilarious interactions with reptiles, predators and poultry animals
November 03, 2024
Beth Broderick’s dodged serious mishaps on the sets Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
The actress, who’s been onboard since 1996 for seven seasons, sat with People for a reflection on some mishaps, particularly one with an alligator.
"the people didn't think the alligator was moving enough, and it didn't look real enough," she remembered. "It was very real, and so they started poking it, and it got mad and it whipped around and missed me by an inch and bit the sofa and wouldn't let go."
"I was like okay, that could be my leg. Okay, let's not poke the alligator anymore," the actor further told the publication.
Beth, alongside Melissa Joan Hart, played otherworldly aunts Hilda and Zelda Spellman to Hart's teenage witch, Sabrina.
However, her job allowed her to experience another “kind of a singular experience," involving a chicken with a tuxedo.
"I was walking from my trailer to the set one day and I hear this crazy commotion in the costume room, and I look in, and our costumer Diane is trying to measure a chicken for a tuxedo, and that chicken did not want to wear a tuxedo," she said. "It was just the funniest thing I've ever seen. And I just thought to myself, who else goes to work and sees that?"
"And it ended up wearing that tuxedo, it did it. But I don't think he liked it."
This brought her to recall another incident as the crew "had crazy stuff like that happen on the show all the time”—the next one involving a lion who walked through an electric fence and got loose during the shoot.
"He just walked through it and didn't care," Broderick remarked.
Broderick, 65, explained that such moments were inevitable on a show about magic for the most part because the crew didn't rely on modern technology like CGI.
"It was a wild show. You had to shoot everything in real time and practical effects and stuff. It was quite an experience and one you can never forget," she said. "That’s the way the show was, you made magic out of mole hills… made magic out of thin air."
