The witching hour—nay, weekend—is upon us. In the next 72 hours (or more, if you’re not into binge-watching), you’ll likely be immersed in the fictional town of Greendale, with Kiernan Shipka and Ross Lynch leading the way as Sabrina Spellman and Harvey Kinkle, respectively, in Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. But you’ve been warned: Jaz Sinclair is the real scene-stealer as Sabrina’s BFF Rosalind Walker. After watching the first few episodes, you might feel empowered to do something that matters, like start a women’s group with the half-witch, half-mortal in your life (or something involving mortals only).
Just 10 months ago, Sinclair was in Los Angeles, in between travels, when she found out she had gotten the part of Roz. In the span of one week, she read for the role, met with Warner Bros. executives, and got the call every aspiring young actor dreams about. “It’s just funny to me how you think you know what life is going to look like and then it can just change so quickly,” Sinclair, 24, says.
We’re sitting on a bench in New York’s Central Park on an overcast and muggy Thursday in early October. Sinclair has traded in the runway-worthy fabrics by the likes of Jill Stuart, BCBG, and Cynthia Rowley from her earlier Cosmopolitan shoot for ripped jeans, a striped linen shirt, and shiny green sneakers. We chat about what life was like before she landed a starring role in Netflix’s latest big budget TV adaptation as the busy traffic of tourists, brave squirrels, and pedi-cabs breeze by. But really, she’d rather do Kristen Wiig impersonations.
Sinclair, who was born Jasmine Sinclair Sabino, grew up on a healthy diet of Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Tom Hanks, and Saturday Night Live, which she watched “religiously.” Mention SNL now and her eyes light up immediately. Sinclair says she has great respect for the women of SNL, namely Gilda Radner, Tina Fey, and Amy Poehler, but her ultimate favorite is Wiig. “I just think she’s so phenomenally talented. I knew all of her skits and would walk around school quoting them 24/7,” she says, before doing her own take on Target Lady (“I’m so freakin’ excited!”) and the super competitive Penelope, complete with all the “ums” and hair twirling. Obviously, she nails them.
A self-described “theater nerd,” Sinclair wasted no time going from “high school student number two” in Footloose to a starring role in her high school’s production of I Never Saw Another Butterfly, Celeste Raspanti’s one-act play about a child who survived a concentration camp during the Holocaust. “I remember finishing a monologue, looking up, and seeing people really moved and then being like, ‘Oh, my imagination just took me somewhere completely different.’ That was the moment I knew that this is what I wanted to do.”
Sinclair moved from her hometown of Dallas to L.A. six years ago, but it wasn’t until 2016 when she made a splash with When the Bough Breaks, in which she played a surrogate who develops a Fatal Attraction-esque crush on the baby’s father (Morris Chestnut). She also had a role in this year’s Slender Man, based on the Creepypasta-created supernatural meme of the same name, and appeared on episodes of The Vampire Diaries in between. With Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Sinclair has officially entered the “big break” portion of her career.
If you’re heading into Chilling Adventures of Sabrina with Melissa Joan Hart (from her TGIF days), cutesy spells (think chimes and bad CGI), and sarcastic, know-it-all talking cats in mind, think again. The new version, based on the comic book series of the same name, comes from the team behind Riverdale. On top of the already-familiar coolness of the teens one town over, expect orgies, gore, witch killings, and yes, cannibalism in Greendale.
Briefly, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is about a 16-year-old girl who’s raised by her aunts following the death of her parents and her struggles with living in two worlds (which, by the way, includes going to witch school on top of regular school). There are witches (of course), warlocks (boy witches), familiars (former witches who are turned into animals, like Salem, as punishment for their crimes), and mortals (like Harvey) who have no clue their little town is in fact littered with these figures. There’s also the constant mention of Satan, of course.
It’s a series that will no doubt go through the meme-heavy ceremony of what it’s like to be a TV show in 2018, so don’t be surprised if you find yourself defending Sabrina and Harvey’s ship name (Habrina) in the coming weeks or RT-ing a mood (in big capital letters) inspired by one of the many excellent moments from Sabrina’s cousin Ambrose (Chance Perdomo), a warlock bound to the Spellman house, which doubles as a mortuary. You should also be prepared to engage in the never-ending Harvey Kinkle (Lynch) versus warlock Nicholas Scratch (Gavin Leatherwood) debate. Good luck with that.
More than a few TV remakes or reboots have undergone 2018 updates—Murphy Brown, Heathers, Charmed—but few are as refreshing as Chilling Adventures of Sabrina's Roz, who goes from a redhead (and arch nemesis of Sabrina) in the comics to a character of color with progressive views.
When her friend Susie Putnam (Lachlan Watson) gets bullied by the jocks in the premiere episode, Roz helps create a club which she says will “topple the white patriarchy.” (She ends up naming the club the Women’s Intersectional Cultural and Creative Association, or WICCA, which is itself a play on the word for Pagan witchcraft.) When she’s forbidden from doing a school assignment on Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Roz announces to her pals, “You will not believe the fascism afoot at Baxter High,” before leading a quick investigation to confirm that the school did indeed ban several books. And this is all after the casual revelation that she tried to start a Daughters of the Black Panthers club at school the year before.
“That’s why this character really resonated with me. I was like, f*ck yeah, I agree with everything that she’s saying,” Sinclair, who originally auditioned for the role of Sabrina, says. “Pretending to be excited about things I’m already excited about is the easiest thing in the world… she’s funny, she’s nerdy. It’s really cool, for once, to be able to look past myself and just see the character.”
Roz isn’t a witch, but Sinclair still gets to play someone with special powers. As the season unfolds, it’s revealed that Roz slowly loses her vision thanks to a family curse (blame the witches) called The Cunning, which actually gives her psychic abilities to see into the past and future. “That part of the story is really exciting for me,” she says. “I didn’t want to be on this show and be a Muggle.”
Sinclair has developed fast friendships with Shipka (a “powerhouse” who’s “always so positive”) and Lynch (“a good dude” who likes to “make food and hang out and talk”). When I ask if anything creepy has happened on set, Sinclair is quick to reveal an annoyance that’s anything but scary. “Anytime you sneeze, everybody screams ‘Hail Satan’ instead of ‘Bless You.’ I keep saying y’all are f*cking with a power… It freaks me out every time.”
Sneezing rituals aside, Sinclair says her time on set has been nourishing. (The show has been filming the first two seasons back-to-back since March.) “We’ve grown a lot since we’ve been out there. You move and you leave your friends and where you were living. That’s your new family. To spend so much time together, you see everybody in their cycles.”
What Sinclair admires most about Roz is her confidence despite being just 17. “That she can just know what she believes and stand up for it loudly at that age is amazing to me,” she says. It’s something she hopes some of the younger viewers will take away from the show. “I really think banding together and sharing our experiences and our opinions and being heard is really how we form the future. [It] goes a long way.”
When Sinclair speaks, she exudes the kind of brightness that lets you know she’s being genuine—but not too serious. Her laughter is infectious. And like Roz, Sinclair doesn’t come across as someone who tries too hard just to impress everyone else. She doesn’t need to. And it’s likely this effortless, almost magical air about her that made her a natural choice for Roz in the first place.
“I’m just trying to be happy,” she says when I ask where she wants her career to go from here—a refreshing take on a question that’s long been peppered with predictable answers from those with dreams to direct (or start a production company, or lifestyle blog, or do serious acting, if they’re comedians). “I’m just trying to enjoy the heck out of each of my moments and find little things about every day that make me feel good.”
This live-in-the-moment approach is something Sinclair’s learned from living on her own, something that’s essential for surviving an industry that can be rewarding and unforgiving at the same time—especially if your show is an instant hit. “When the show drops and all this attention comes, which makes me profoundly uncomfortable, I hope I stay grounded. I’m not worried about my head getting big. I’m worried about getting emotional and scared.”
Anticipating the magnitude of what Sabrina could be (reviews have been supremely positive), Sinclair knows this could all disappear tomorrow. “I’m really just riding this right now," she says. "In this industry, everything is so temporary. So I’m really trying to dive in… and soak all of it up.”
Hairstylist: Erol Karadag at The Industry MGMT; Makeup Artist: Alana Wright using Dior Beauty; Set Designer: Stockton Hall; Nail Artist: Kayo Higuchi for CHANEL Le Vernis; Photographer: Ruben Chamorro; Stylist: Tiffany Reid; Creative Director: Abby Silverman; Senior Visual Editor + Producer: Raydene Salinas Hansen; Designer: Katie Buckleitner.
On Jaz (blue and gold look): cardigan by BCBG; skirt by Jill Stuart; bra by Eres; earrings (from left) by Dinosaur Designs, Lizzie Fortunato; necklaces (from top) by Meadowlark, Vita Fede; ring (right) by Le Brain; and rings (left) by Tai Jewelry, Bonheur Jewelry. On Jaz (red and black look): blazer by Kate Spade New York; skirt by Delphine; bra by Eres; earrings by Alison Lou, Stella + Dot; rings (right) by Dinosaur Designs, Soko; ring (left) by Isharya. On Jaz (multicolor look): top by Cynthia Rowley; dress by Self-Portrait; earrings (from left) by Olive and Piper, Annika Inez.
