Maisie Williams Played Her ‘Practical Magic 2’ Character As a Lesbian
If only the movie sequel had properly followed the book.
Maisie Williams is speaking out about her Practical Magic 2 character’s sexuality.
Author Alice Hoffman’s sequel to Practical Magic, The Book of Magic, was published in 2021. It follows the same broad plot as the film, featuring the Owens’ attempt to break the family curse that dooms all men loved by an Owens woman after Kylie’s boyfriend, Gideon, falls into a coma.
But there’s one key aspect of the novel that the movie discards—Antonia isn’t subject to the family curse because she’s a lesbian and in love with a woman.
This difference came up during a recent interview Williams—who plays Antonia in the film—and Joey King (Kylie) did with Gay Times. The interviewer pointed out that the real Owens family curse is essentially heterosexuality and asked Williams about whether she still played her character as gay.
“Yes, I did,” she said. “And there’s been a whole lot of different edits of the movie and there was a lot of different versions of the script, but I always played Antonia as a sapphic icon.
“I love that. I think it brought a real joy to the scenes when we would be talking about Gideon, because Antonia just has a completely different perspective on men altogether,” she added.
Williams isn’t the first Practical Magic cast member to bring up Antonia’s sexuality. Evan Rachel Wood, who played Kylie in the original film, has spoken on several occasions about the decision to recast the daughters.
“Its a mystery how the oldest daughter is with child, but has evaded the curse, until it is revealed that she doesnt fall in love with men, she falls in love with women,” she wrote of the book. “In the new film, they removed the pregnancy and queerness from my character, made her younger, and sent her in search of a way to break the curse, instead of her younger sister.”
(It’s a little convoluted, so it’s worth elaborating that Wood is referring to the fact that both films present Kylie as the older daughter and Antonia as the younger, when the reverse is true in the books. Antonia is the lesbian character in the novel.)
It’s certainly a shame that Practical Magic, which has garnered such a strong queer fanbase over the years, stripped the overt sapphicness from the sequel. Despite Williams’ comments about the script and movie both undergoing a number of changes, it’s unclear whether queerness was ever a consideration for the project, or whether it was always destined to be nothing more than subtext, at best.
There are already rumblings of the possibility of a third film that centers wholly on the new generation. But even if that happens, and Antonia gets to be true to her book characterization, we’ve already been robbed of getting to see this really fun subversion of the Owens family curse on the big screen.
