The legend of Baba Yaga, the Slavic ‘witch’ who oscillated between eating children’s bones and being a force of good, has fascinated the world for centuries. John Wicke brought the name to the mainstream years ago, before playwright Kat Sandler reclaimed her with her play, Yaga. The play has now been adapted into a TV show by Kat, which sets Baba Yaga in the modern world, tasking two detectives with solving a crime in a small town that may be ‘haunted’ by this entity.
As Yaga is set to premiere in India on Lionsgate Play later this week, Kat sits down to talk to Hindustan Times about the story’s screen premiere, reclaiming the ‘witch’ as the anti-hero, and more.
HT: What was the biggest difference you had to make to the narrative when you brought Yaga onto the screen from the stage?
Kat Sandler: The biggest difference is just expanding it. The play featured three actors playing 14 parts, two chairs, and a rolling desk on a bare stage that we used for everything. So, the biggest thing was expanding not just the production but the mystery of it. So what’s been very, very challenging and fun for me is departing from the story of the play, because now, thanks to Mr Hudson Williams, so many people have read the play and know that version of the story and those twists. I want it to be satisfying for that audience so they can enjoy it, but you also have to create way more characters, mystery, and clues, expand the world of Wittick, and make it a satisfying mystery for television.
It’s been so exciting to get to put all these little Easter eggs that people are finding because the internet is so smart and crazy. But they’re picking up stuff that I’m like, “Oh, yeah. I didn’t even know the art department put that in there. That’s amazing.”
HT: Was it ever a fear that it might just get too big and the essence of Yaga would be lost?
Kat Sandler: I think there’s always a fear with the mystery that it’s going to be either too confusing or too simple. Some people are always going to call the twists. The audiences now are so smart. The trick we really tried to pull was to make it satisfying whether you knew the twists or not. The ending of the series is different from the ending of the play, but I won’t say by how much. There are already departures, like there’s no Logan character in the play. That was a really fun nod to the play where the actors play all the parts, and Hudson playing two parts is a little nod to it.
HT: Mysteries set in small towns have been a rage ever since Twin Peaks came out years ago. More recently, Broadchurch and others have expanded on it. What were your inspirations when you were writing Yaga?
Kat Sandler: When I was writing the play, the inspirations were Broadchurch and Twin Peaks. They are in there. There’s a ton of fairy tales. There’s a ton of millennial romcoms and 90s witch movies like The Craft and detective thrillers like Seven and The Usual Suspects. I like art that is self-aware and not precious, which is why there’s a line in the show where Rapp says, ‘Baba Yaga like in John Wick,’ and Carrie’s character says, ‘What’s John Wick?’ But I love acknowledging that, in this world, John Wick exists, so you have that joke. Pop culture that knows other pop culture is very fun for me.
HT: The play almost has Baba Yaga as the protagonist. That’s because Baba Yaga and witches have always been written by men, and that takes away their agency. Here, you begin from her perspective, which is refreshing
Kat Sandler: I would call her the anti-hero. She’s very much in the style of those Dexters and Hannibals and those men that we’ll watch and be very entertained by watching them do bad things because we’re not worried about them being likeable. They are inherently likeable because they’re watchable. With Baba Yaga’s monologues in the TV show and in the play, she is trying to set the record straight and tell you what you’ve been getting wrong.
HT: Is it inherently more difficult to make women anti-heroes likeable because of how our society is structured? For instance, people would think Walter White is a good guy, but a woman becomes a witch the moment she is even slightly bad.
Kat Sandler: Yeah. But I think the fun of this was I wasn’t really trying to make her likeable. I just tried to make her fun. I don’t think people finding Walter White likeable is an issue. I love Walter White. He’s a literal monster. I’m very interested in this idea of what makes a monster. You look at famous serial killers, and they’re charming. You look at modern monsters, and we have so many of them running around the world right now. And they’re not seen as witches. One of the things this story posits is that a witch is just someone that society has decided they’re afraid of. We haven’t decided that we’re afraid of evil billionaires in the same way. We’re not burning them at the stake. People vilify older women. If you’re not a mother, if you’re not a virgin, if you’re not all these things, what are you? You’re a witch. You’re evil.
Yaga premiered on October 23 on Crave. The series comes to India on Lionsgate Play on November 6. Yaga stars Carrie-Anne Moss, Noah Reid, Clark Backo, and Hudson Williams in the lead roles.