The Witchy Girls Are Taking Drag Magic To The Screen

“What if witches didn’t use their powers for good, and just used them for themselves?” is the premise behind the new webseries, The Witchy Girls, by drag icons and friends Lazy Susan and Zelda Moon.

“We’ve been concocting this show for ages,” explains Drag Race Down Under winner Lazy Susan. “And we were always asking, if we ever got the opportunity to go beyond live performance, and onto the screen, what would we wanna do?”

Their answer was something which throws back to the monster-of-the-week shows of the 90s, like Buffy or X-Files, as well as the classic era of ABC Kids.

“The Witchy Girls is kind of a love letter to those things. And also like, like really resonated with us as millennials,” explains Zelda Moon.

“I feel like millennials are the generation that really grew up around the nostalgia industrial industry, and I think it is really tragic of us to engage in the most millennial-core behaviour, which is just refusing to leave your childhood.”

 

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Created by Robbie Ten Eyck (Lazy Susan) and Kane Bonato (Zelda Moon), the new supernatural drag-comedy series – produced in partnership with Comedy Republic – reimagines 90s teen witch stories through a chaotic, queer and unapologetically internet-era lens.

“We pitched it as Sabrina the Teenage Witch meets It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”

Lazy and Zelda are longtime collaborators, performing live drag shows, hosting their own podcast Death To Everyone, and also performing for years as part of a drag girl group called The Beastie Girls with fellow queen Benign Girl (who Lazy Susan says “fell down a well recently”).

“Lazy and I met at the same gig, we did a Honcho Disko together many moons ago, and kind of just hit it off,” says Zelda Moon. “But I think when we saw each other perform, it was like “Oh, kindred spirit”.

But The Witchy Girls wasn’t an easy show to make, with the crew eventually deciding to self-fund the series after missing out on multiple rounds of funding. After the first rejection, they decided to “bury the idea in the backyard where it couldn’t hurt anyone else, like the Jumanji board”. But after Lazy won Drag Race Down Under, they figured it was worth trying again – but still with no luck.

“It was just this absolute kick in the guts because it felt like, I’m trying to start a film career and I’m not even being able to get the funding to make a TikTok in this country,” Lazy Susan reflects.

This is where the production partnership with Melbourne comedy theatre Comedy Republic came about, with live events kicking off in May to help recoup some of the costs.

“It’s very funny putting yourself at the centre of something like this and then inviting some of Australia’s most talented performers to come and take part,” laughs Lazy Susan. “So it’s Zelda and I acting opposite Hannah Gadsby or Geraldine Hickey or Alaska Thunderfuck and other people like that”. She notes that every creative involved donated their time.

Zelda agrees. “It was insane how many people have come to the table to make this super low budget, very silly thing look far more expensive and overqualified than it is.”

The Witchy Girls will premiere with live screening events in Melbourne throughout May.