Interview: Inside 'Hexed' — Disney's Directors Conjure a New Kind of Witch

There’s been no shortage of magical human characters across Walt Disney Animation Studios’ 64 animated features, but if they aren’t a fairy godmother or Merlin, they’re usually a villainous witch (Mama Odie excluded). That changes with the studio’s 65th animated film, Hexed, about a girl named Billie who not only discovers she’s a witch, but that there’s a magical realm that could feel more like home than the life she knows in the mortal world. Following Disney Animation’s presentation at Annecy Festival, I had the kismet opportunity to talk with directors Jason Hand and Fawn Veerasunthorn about bringing Disney’s first heroic witch to life, the more cartoony approach they’re taking, and the real-world magic that makes their studio so special.

Disney has had success with live-action witches over the years, including the Halloween staples Hocus Pocus and Halloweentown, plus Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which was a fixture of ABC’s TGIF lineup in the 90s. “What attracted me to those stories is how people come together to uplift each other through magic,” Veerasunthorn revealed when asked about drawing inspiration from film’s witchy icons. “Magic is kind of a metaphor for their gift, their talent, the thing that sometimes gets misunderstood by other folks. There's something about finding your coven and then thriving together.”

“Magic, and failing at magic, is such a fun thing to play with,” Hand explained. “From a magical-comedy standpoint, which is what this is, we can really push things.” Early in the story process, the directors asked the team how they would use magic if they had powers. The answers surprised them. “A lot of it was in the dumber corner, and I was like, ‘I see you, I would do dumb things with it, too,’” Veerasunthorn laughed. “The animation team did all these [explorations] of people using magic just because they don't want to walk over there and get their bag,” Hand added. “That's true wish fulfillment, right?”

Wish fulfillment is at the essence of every classic Disney story. Hexed’s plot involves Billie’s mother, Alice, trying to protect her daughter from not only her dormant magic powers but also the world of Hexe via a magic-inhibiting bracelet. Her wish, unfortunately, is unfulfilled when the bracelet breaks. Hand and Veerasunthorn are two-thirds of the film's directing team, with Josie Trinidad keeping production going at the studio as the film nears completion. “She's committed to telling the best story about a mother; That was part of the original pitch,” Veerasunthorn said of their co-director. “To me, she's the first mom I've seen at work. I'd been working in animation, thinking, ‘Can you really have a baby while working in animation?’ And Josie figured it out. She's like, ‘It's hard to figure this out, but you're going to be okay.’ For her to want to tell this story, and for me to be on this film, is incredibly special.” 

“Josie's also super funny and a little unhinged,” Hand added, crediting their third director with setting much of Hexed’s comedic tone. His collaboration with Trinidad began before either of them worked under Disney Animation’s sorcerer’s hat, when they were both animation students at CalArts together. “Billie and her whole makeup as a character, that's all Josie. She asked me to join the film, and I was glad to, because I wanted to be part of an original film and I love working with her.”

During their presentation, they mentioned Milt Kahl’s work as an animation benchmark they hoped to match. “There's a sophistication to it that our heads of animation love,” Hand shared, citing Kahl’s cartoony characters like Merlin and Madam Mim in The Sword in the Stone, while also pointing out that Kahl was capable of animating strong, heroic characters too. In Sleeping Beauty alone, he was directing animator on Prince Philip, his mischievous horse Sampson, and even Maleficent’s goons. “In general, cartooniness is something we'd pulled back from a bit in some of our CG films, and we said, ‘We don't need to do that.’”

As a shining example of that philosophy in practice, Hand pointed to the three-eyed cat sage who lives in a magical camper. His name is almost as wacky as he is: Beef Roger Crummchuk. “A character like Beef Roger, who can literally stretch like the Genie and grow limbs like Stitch, that's really fun,” Hand smiled. “It's a huge technological challenge, for sure, but we can do that now. That's the kind of stuff that makes it interesting and fun to do as we're playing in this world of magic.”

Acknowledging that magic in Disney animation often conjures images of magic dust, the directors wanted to take a different approach with Hexed. “We actually tested out some ideas that were more of a 2D-style magic, but what we found, when we were doing all the production design, is that there's a tactile nature to everything in this world that we really wanted the magic to have too,” Hand revealed. “There have been a lot of other films that have done some of that hand-drawn stuff, which I love, but we found it was more interesting for our storyline to have it be more tactile.”

“We did a lot of research on different types of magic, and instead of just saying, ‘It can be anything,’ we wanted to ground it in something people can find a connection with,” Veerasunthorn shared. But there’s also magic in the details. Crescent moons aren’t just in the logo or on Billie’s nails, but also a hidden design feature of her hair. “The technical animation team was passionate about grouping her hair into these crescent-moon shapes, the way Aurora's hair is quite graphic in how it moves and falls [in Sleeping Beauty]. That part is really fun.” The crescent moons also appear when Billie opens the portal to Hexe, two white crescents orbiting each other in opposite directions, a metaphor for the mother/daughter relationship. “We're calling them the mother-daughter crescents… They're coming together, but then they miss each other.”

It’s no secret that Mary Blair was Walt Disney’s favorite development artist, and he was often disappointed that films like Cinderella and Peter Pan lost her essence in the final frame. One of the studio’s most prominent production designers today, Lorelay Bové, is a disciple of Blair’s aesthetic, and the directors aren’t repeating the filtration issue that upset Walt. “Lorelay has an incredible sense of color in her personal work that I've always loved,” Veerasunthorn fawned. “On this film, we said, ‘Go run free with what you like to do.’” The contrast between the hard-lined mortal world Billie grew up in and the fanciful world of Hexe really comes through in the work Bové did. “We were always pointing back to her paintings: ‘Let's do it like that. Let's not tame it down to what real-life lighting would be. Push ourselves.’ It's been exciting.”

Hexed may be Disney Animation’s 65th animated feature, but it’s richly steeped in the history and heritage of the studio. Hand-drawn animator Randy Haycock was involved in the film's drawovers and some 2D animation, including a shadowy raven that the Annecy audience got a brief glimpse of. “Ron Clements is at our studio again, coming in and chatting with us at lunch,” Hand gushed. “He's like, ‘Here's my original Little Mermaid script that I hand-typed on a typewriter. This is the original, so don't mess it up as I give this to you.’ That's an incredible legacy that I feel very passionate about.” During the presentation, Hand also shared a picture from his CalArts years, when he met Ollie Johnston. But the filmmakers were also clear that, despite many homages to the past that fans may find in Hexed, they’re keeping Walt Disney’s philosophy at heart. “As we're doing anything going forward, just like Walt would have done, and I mean this in the best way, it's about pushing forward.”

Disney Animation’s 65th animated feature, Hexed, will cast a spell over a theater near you beginning November 25th.