Under Her Spell

Kiernan Shipka Has Charmed Fans As Sabrina The Teenage Witch. Now Let Her Captivate You As She Opens Up About Downtime Rituals, Talking Things Out, And The Power Of Strong-Willed Women.

- Kerensa Cadenas

Kiernan Shipka has been working as an actress for pretty much her entire life, but for years, the former Mad Men star was probably more on your parents’ radar than on yours. “I may as well have been a fly on the wall at the Kids’ Choice Awards,” she says. Now, with the 19-year-old playing iconic teen witch Sabrina Spellman in Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, she’s finally ready to welcome a new fan base: people her own age. “Having my friends be genuinely excited to watch the show is really cool,” Kiernan says. The creepy series has all the facets of a grown-up role (A love triangle! Challenging authority! Blood!) and a pro-female message she’s happy to get behind. “I’m unreasonably excited that young girls are going to get to have this character be an inspiration to them. I think she is so strong willed, has such a good heart, speaks her mind, stands up for herself, and questions things that she feels aren’t right.” Get to know Kiernan and you’ll feel the same way about her too. ON DOING GOOD

An upside to having phones and social media has been so much more awareness of all the injustices and things going on in the world, and having a voice and platform that just didn’t exist before. It’s just really incredible to me—I feel like I can continually learn new things every single day. Recently on Instagram, I did the 10 Featured Teachers [campaign], and it was so amazing and such a beautiful experience to see all these teachers and kids getting books that they needed. It was very gratifying to see it actually have an impact in individual people’s lives and to [watch] thank-you videos from [people] who are just so, so happy to have a book that they’ve wanted . . . it’s just amazing. So more of that to come, for sure. I’m interested to see how we can take that hashtag and put it on a greater scale.