Interview: YAGA Cast Talks Magic at SDCC 2026 – “Women are Magic”

The cast of YAGA dazzled fans during the  YAGA panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2026. The panel took place on Saturday, July 25, and I was there to live tweet the whole thing. After the panel there was a press conference featuring executive producer and creator Kat Sandler and stars Clark Backo and Noah Reid. I had a chance to ask a question during the press conference; read on to see what they said.

During the panel, Backo noted that Sandler set the tone for YAGA right away by telling the cast that there was no magic in the show. The story, which is based on Slavic folklore about the Baba Yaga witch, certainly features a lot of supernatural and otherworldly elements. But there is no magic, per se.

I asked Sandler, Backo and Reid to expand on YAGA’s magic-less world in the pressroom with this question: “AMC has a really brilliant stable of witch and supernatural shows: Mayfair Witches, A Discovery of Witches, Sanctuary: A Witch’s Tale. And the vampire world is full of witches. But in those shows, witchcraft and magic is real. You touched on this in the panel and I’d love to hear an expansion on it: How does it change knowing that there is no magic [in the show’s mythology]. How do you approach it when you’re playing the role?”

Clark Backo: “It’s hard, because to me, life is magic. The fact that we’re all in this room is magic.”

Kat Sandler: “That panel was magic!”

Backo: “The fact that we exist on this earth…. I played a geologist about a year ago in a horror movie so I did a lot of research on that. I don’t remember a lot of it. [Laughs] But the point is, there’s magic everywhere, constantly, whether you believe in magic or not is kind of irrelevant. For me, there wasn’t too much work involved in that respect because reality is magic and magic is reality to me.”

Noah Reid: “I think it’s also interesting if you’re in the perspective of trying to solve a crime. This show starts in very real-world, high stakes. There’s a missing person and we all know the statistics on missing people. We’ve got a short window to recover somebody, and you’re not really probably thinking – I don’t think I ever thought as Charlie Rapp, ‘Well, what if he, like magically disappeared?’ That’s not something that enters into our brain space, first and foremost. But when you talk to people about their supernatural experiences, or moments that they’ve had or felt just a feeling or memories that have something to do with the time of somebody’s death or the time of somebody’s birth, all of these interconnected moments are part of this supernatural fabric that runs through everybody’s life. I think, to your point about the vampire world, all of that stuff, whether it addresses the reality of magic or supernatural elements, it comes from the same source material, which is that we all, to some degree, maybe we’re pushing it away, but it’s present. It’s a matter of how much we engage with it and I think what’s cool about being here at Comic-Con is that this is a world where people really engage with it and are really into it and are excited about it. And that’s a really amazing element to this show to get to lean into for us.”

Sandler: “Since we were in development, we really talked about this in three acts. The first act is very grounded, cops and detectives. It’s a little Mare of Easttown. The second act is a little more of a hint of the supernatural, True Detective. And then the third act you’re into the fucking witch. But we use dreams in the show. You can’t tell me dreams aren’t magical. The shit that I’ve seen in my head…it’s wild! I think we have a lot of the feeling of magic that permeates the whole show, even if parts of it feel much more grounded and real. People are magic. Women are magic. So, there’s lots of magic in the show.”

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