The WandaVision star opens up about her nomination and what’s next.
Written and reported by Tess Bonn.
Actress Kathryn Hahn is nominated for her second Emmy. This time for her role in WandaVision, which is up for 23 awards total. She found out while on location filming Knives Out 2.
Somehow, she’s shocked.
“It was a waterfall,” Hahn told us of hearing the news via a text from her publicist full of exclamation points. But that wasn’t even the best part — she also came home to a celebratory Aperol Spritz cocktail prepared by her family. “The whole thing was a real magical evening.”
Less than a week after the Emmy nominations were first announced, Hahn was still in disbelief about scoring a place on the list, alongside Mare Of Easttown’s Julianne Nicholson and Jean Smart as well as Hamilton’s Phillipa Soo, and Moses Ingram from The Queen’s Gambit.
“I’ve been at this game for a minute and always kind of figured that I was under the radar,” she said. Sure, she hasn’t received as many leading roles as she’s probably deserved, often playing the best friend or sidekick in films like Bad Moms and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, but in each of her roles, she’s unforgettable, due to some sort of combo of her charm, her wit, and her uncanny comedic timing. Sometimes she steals the show, which some might say was almost the case in WandaVision.
But Hahn is seriously humble. She didn’t expect WandaVision or even her character as the powerful witch Agatha Harkness to be such a hit. Of course, the series became a bona fide phenomenon, including her catchy WandaVision theme song, “Agatha All Along,” which topped both Billboard and iTunes charts. “I had no idea that this was going to be the thing,” she said.
Clearly, she hadn’t checked Twitter. (She doesn’t have a huge social media presence, which might account for her lack of awareness of how much the world adores her.) While Hahn couldn’t believe she was up for an Emmy nomination this year, her fans could: News of her nomination sparked joy across social media, prompting an outpouring of joy and support. “Let’s hear it for the Hahnaissance,” one Twitter user declared.
This also isn’t the first time Hahn has been nominated for an Emmy — she previously snagged a nomination in 2017 for depicting a Rabbi in Amazon Studio’s Transparent.
The question everyone’s asking now is whether Hahn will win this time around. Oh and if she’ll reprise her role as Agatha in the Marvel Universe. But that remains a big question mark: The studio is known for being famously tight-lipped about its plans — and even Hahn doesn’t know anything about them. Still, she’s absolutely up for it, adding that she hopes her WandaVision character will also inform future roles.
“The thing about Agatha that was so fun to play is that she just takes up so much space,” she said. “There’s something interesting in that kind of scale, that I’m interested in exploring more.”
Hahn’s roles are continuing to grow, and we love to see it: She has plenty of projects (both onscreen and off) in the works. In addition to becoming a brand ambassador for P&G’s cleaning line 9 Elements, she’s starring in an upcoming miniseries, The Shrink Next Door on AppleTV+, which features her alongside Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd. In it, Hahn plays the sister of a longtime patient who gets his life taken over by a sketchy psychiatrist. Though Hahn has worked with both actors before, in the past she was in much smaller roles. This time, the playing field’s a little more level. She explained that this series gave her the chance to work more closely with Ferrell after bit parts alongside him in Anchorman and Step Brothers.
“I was like, ‘Ah!’ looking up at him at that stage of my career, so it was really fun to get to meet him on these terms, all these years later,” she said.
Hahn also hopes to continue to expand the roles for women in Hollywood. One top-of-mind topic she hopes to explore is menopause, something she said is still kind of “untouched.”
“It’s a real trippy chapter that we just don’t hear about as women, and I would love to have that de-stigmatized and talked about,” she said.
