Trivia / The Worst Witch

General Trivia

• Many of the extras that were in the final scene of the season 2 finale of the 2017 series didn't applaud expect for a few as well as Ynez Williams, Bella Ramsey, Nicola Stephenson, and Kitty Slack in the finale's final seconds. So pre-recorded applause was edited in. However, during the filming of the Grand Finale, almost all of the extras including the main cast were applauding.
• The final scenes of the season 2 finale, "The Big Freeze", and the series finale, "The Witching Hour Part 2", respectively were filmed in front of a studio audience. Ironically every episode, sans these two episodes, throughout its run were not filmed in front of an audience.

Trivia Tropes

• Ability over Appearance:
  • Enid Nightshade in the books is described as a Huge Schoolgirl with hair the "colour of milky tea". She's played in the 1998 TV series by Jessica Fox who is very petite and has darker hair - but is wonderfully spunky and captures Enid's personality perfectly.
  • A necessary one due to a change in character. Miss Drill's appearance is not described but the illustrations show her as a hard-faced Brawn Hilda. In the 1998 TV series where she is a Cool Teacher, she's played by the more athletically built and kind-faced Claire Porter, while in the 2017 series she is played by Shauna Shim.
• Accidentally-Correct Writing: It's a gag in Season 2 that Miss Bat insists she was in Inner Mongolia, applying the logic that if there's an Outer Mongolia then there must be an Inner one too. Despite Miss Drill insisting there's no such place, there actually is.
• Acting for Two: The actress playing Miss Cackle (in the adaptations) also plays her evil twin sister Agatha. The same happens in foreign language dubs.
• Actor-Shared Background: Polly James, who played Miss Crotchet, also had a job as a teacher.
• Ascended Fanon: An occasional plot in fan fiction for the 1998 series would be about what would happen if a boy wanted to attend Cackle's. Season 2's "Up in the Air" has Charlie Blossom considering it.
• California Doubling:
  • As this was a joint UK-Canada production, a few episodes were filmed in Canada. These usually take place outside the school, explained away as special trips for Mildred and friends. They're all still implied to take place in the UK though, and "Let Them Eat Cake" has Cosy's Tearoom as within walking distance of Cackle's.
  • The 2017 series used two different castles to stand in for Cackle's Academy. One in the UK and the other in Germany.
• The Cast Show Off: In the Christmas Episode, Ruby has to throw a tap dancing routine into the pantomime to stall time. Her actress Joanna Dyce is a trained dancer and became a choreographer in adulthood.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: In the NHK Japanese dub, Mildred is voiced by TV actress Rio Suzuki, who many anime fans can recognize her as the titular character of Dororo (2019).
• Children Voicing Children: Somewhat, but in the NHK Japanese dub, Rio Suzuki (Mildred) was 15 at the time voicing her.
• Completely Different Title: The series is known in France as Amandine Malabul (which is Mildred Hubble's name in French). All of the books were prefixed with her name, and a subtitle. For instance, the fourth book, The Worst Witch All at Sea became Amandine Malabul: La Sorciere a Peur de l'eau ("Mildred Hubble: The Witch with a Fear of Water").
  • Weirdsister College became known as Eine Lausige Hexe in Cambridge ("The Worst Witch in Cambrige.")Fitting, as the show itself was Eine Lausige Hexe, which would be The Lousy Witch.
• Creator-Preferred Adaptation: Jill Murphy preferred the 1998 TV series to the Made-for-TV Movie. She did however say she felt the earlier episodes were better (before the show had to invent new material to expand from the books). She seems to have strong feelings for the 2017 series, in which she has been more involved in the production.
• Dawson Casting: For the most part, averted. None of the actresses for the show were over eighteen. The fourth season was even relocated to a college setting because Georgina Sherrington was too old to believably still be in school. Also a case of Real Life Writes the Plot. She was the youngest of the other actresses, only being twelve, while they were all around fifteen.
• Fake Brit:
  • Clare Coulter, who played Miss Cackle (and her twin sister Agatha), is Canadian. She did spend a good portion of her childhood in London, but still affects an accent. As a result, when the series was exported to the US and the characters were dubbed over with American accents, she did her own dubbing in her natural accent.
  • Subverted with Sheena Larkin, who plays Mrs Cosy (owner of a nearby coffee shop). The character was written to be English, but the actress is Northern Irish and uses her natural accent.
• Friendship on the Set: The actresses in the 1998 series became "like sisters", according to Georgina Sherrington, and stayed in touch long after it ended.
• Funny Character, Boring Actor: Inverted. Miss Hardbroom is the stoic, Stern Teacher who will only ever be The Comically Serious at best. Kate Duchene was nearly turned down because they thought she was too nice and goofy to play such a terrifying character.
• He Also Did: Bella Ramsey stars alongside Ameerah Falzon-Ojo (From So Awkward) as the voice of Hilda on Netflix's Hilda.
• International Coproduction: The series was co-produced by HTV, a UK television station, and Gala Films, a Canadian company - requiring several episodes to be filmed in Canada and some cast members to be Canadian, most prominently Clare Coulter as Miss Cackle. The 2017 is an international production with CBBC and ZDT, a German Channel.
• Never Work with Children or Animals:
  • Felicity Jones describes the difficulty of acting alongside the cats, especially trying to make it look like they weren't clawing the girls' faces off in scenes where they were supposed to be friendly. Georgina Sherrington likewise says that the cat playing Tabby hated her, because he knew as soon as he was with her, it meant they were going to be filming for four hours under hot lights.
  • It's because of this trope that the tradition of cats riding on the back of the broomstick doesn't really appear past "A Pig in a Poke". The one time it does is when they're flying to Rowan Webb's retreat, and it's a plot point that the cats are inside baskets (Mildred trying to hide Tabby).
  • Real bats were actually used for Mildred's, and one take was disrupted when the bat flew down and pressed buttons on the camera with its wing. On another occasion, one flew up into the rafters and they had to wait for it to come back down.
  • In the first episode, it's obviously a green screened tarantula in Mildred's hand. Presumably to spare the thirteen-year-old Georgina Sherrington having to hold a live spider (as Mildred is supposed to love them).
  • For the scene where Mildred has to try and grab Enid's monkey, they had to do multiple takes because the monkey kept moving too soon; knowing Georgina Sherrington would be lunging at it.
• No Export for You:
  • This is an odd example, but the entire series, including Weirdsister College, The New Worst Witch and the movie from the 80's, is available on DVD ... in Australia. Thankfully for fans of the show, however, the Region Coding on the box is wrong. The discs are set for region 0, not region 4.
  • In 2016 the show became available under the German title "Eine Lausige Hexe." It will show 4 series as, like the above example, Weirdsister College is considered a fourth season of the Georgina Sherrington series. The DVDs do have an English audio option. However, unlike with the earlier release, these discs appear to be set for region 2.
  • The 2017 series averted this by being made available for international streaming on Netflix, once each season finished airing on CBBC.
  • Japan is an very bizarre case: Since the debut of the 2017 series, many people thought neither this version, nor any other part of the franchise would be brought there, due to the similarity with Little Witch Academia, from which the animated adaptations are compared with the book and other adaptations, but surprisingly enough, the 2017 version got two Japanese dubs in 2020: One broadcasted by NHK and another by Netflix itself, each one with their own voice cast. It also helps a lot none of the voice actresses who worked in that anime series works in any of the two dubs of the show.
  • HBO co-produced the 1980s telefilm and aired the 1998 series, but after a few years the 90s version vanished from HBO Family (as HBO neglected the channel) and neither Weirdsister College or the New revival made it to the US.
• The Original Darrin:
  • Felicity Jones resumed her role as the first Ethel for the spinoff Weirdsister College.
  • Terrence Hardiman likewise comes back as the Grand Wizard in Season 3.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Famously with Katy Allen replacing Felicity Jones as Ethel in Season 2. Actually explained as Ethel giving herself a magical disguise to stop people thinking she's related to Sybil. Jones returned as Ethel for Weirdsister College.
  • Miss Hardbroom is played by Kate Duchêne in the original TV series and Weirdsister College, but the role was taken over by Caroline O'Neill for The New Worst Witch.
  • Fenella Feverfew is played by Emily Stride in Season 1-2 and Julia Melowski in Season 3.
  • Chief Wizard Egbert Hellibore is played by Terrence Hardiman in Season 1, but replaced with Richard Durden for one episode in Season 2. Hardiman returns to play him in Season 3.
  • In the 2017 series, Maud is played by Meibh Campbell in season 1, who is replaced by Megan Hughes from Season 2. This is explained in the show that Maud changed her face while playing Hide and Seek, thinking that she wouldn't be found.
  • In the 2017 series, for the show's fourth and final season, Lydia Page takes over playing Mildred from Bella Ramsey, who left to focus on her mental health. This is explained as a result of Mildred accidentally mixing an appearance changing potion that permanently changes her.
• Overtook the Manga: The 1998 television series's third season was composed completely of original stories as they had exhausted all of the books (which at the time only went up to The Worst Witch All at Sea).
• Playing Their Own Twin: Clare Coulter plays both Miss Cackle and her twin sister Agatha in the 1998 series, Charlotte Rae likewise played them both in the TV movie, and Claire Higgins portrays both in the 2017 series.
• Real Life Writes the Hairstyle: Georgina Sherrington had to wear a wig for the 1998 series, as her hair was too short and light to match Mildred's waist-length black plaits. Her own hair was used for Weirdsister College.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Ruby is absent from a couple of episodes of the 1998 series - "The Great Outdoors" and "Let Them Eat Cake" - which were filmed in Canada. This is because Joanna Dyce had a dancing commitment and couldn't make the trip.
• Quietly Cancelled: Despite no official announcement from either CBBC or Netflix, with no new episodes of the 2017 series aired since August 10th, 2020 on CBBC and October 1st, 2020 on Netflix, and the main cast having moved on to other projects, as well as Jill Murphy's passing on August 18, 2021, fans can easily come to the conclusion that the 2017 series has come to a close.
• Same Language Dub: When aired in North America, the series was redubbed with Canadian voice actors, likely due to the show being a British-Canadian co-production. Cackle's actress in the show, who was Canadian in real life, voiced her own character using her natural accent.
• Self-Adaptation: Jill Murphy wrote seven episodes of the 1998 series.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: In 2017 version, Jenny Richardson (Ethel), Miriam Petche (Esmerelda) and Trixie Hyde (Sybil) share a resemblance with each other.
• Stunt Casting: The role of Miss Bat was beefed up in the 1998 series for Una Stubbs - who was the biggest name in the cast at the time.
• Technology Marches On: Both TV adaptations avert this by updating the books. The 1998 series has several mentions of computers and the internet (with at least two episodes where they are important to the plot) and Ruby Cherrytree is keen on gadgets. "Sorcery and Chips" builds its tension around blocky computers that are going to be hooked up to the internet at the end of the week, Ruby's various toys were all high-tech for the period, the first episode has a then-state of the art virtual reality simulation. In the 2017 version Mildred has a mobile phone, although once she gets to Cackle's it is confiscated by Miss Hardbroom. Instead, the witches use 'mag-lets' - magical tablets that are phones in all but name.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In an early draft of the first book, Mildred wasn't a witch at all, but a fairy who had ended up at a witch school by mistake.
  "She had pointy ears because she was in fact a fairy, and was originally in the wrong school – she should have gone to a fairy school. At the end of this story she starts to grow wings and has to wear a very tight vest to stop them showing. She flies out of the window to find the fairy school and has a wonderful time there."
  • Georgina Sherrington almost wasn't cast as Mildred, because she had her arm in a sling at her first two auditions, and they were worried it wouldn't heal in time for filming. It had come off by the third, and she won the part after a meeting with director Andrew Morgan.
  • While it's never been confirmed, Georgina Sherrington was told by a casting director that there was originally a plan for a feature film to serve as the Grand Finale of the 1998 series. Since Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was released around the same time, the plan was abandoned and they made the Weirdsister College season instead.
• Word of Dante: CITV explained Miss Bat's disappearance between Seasons 2 and 3 as going to live in Inner Mongolia.
• Word of Saint Paul: Harshna Brahmbhatt said on a CITV interview that Jadu's key characteristic is that she gets excited really easily. This trait doesn't really come into play outside the episode "A Pig In A Poke".
• Working Title: Weirdsister College had a working title of The Worst Witch: The College Years (and ended up being used in an autumn CITV promo.)
• Write Who You Know: Jill Murphy based Maud on her best friend as a teenager, a girl called Elizabeth. Mildred was based off herself.

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