Hocus Pocus 2’s Kathy Najimy reveals more on her character Mary Sanderson’s crooked smile

Nearly 30 years after the original Hocus Pocus debuted, the sequel Hocus Pocus 2 arrived in Disney Plus, though fans noticed a distinct difference in one character.

Kathy Najimy’s Mary Sanderson – one of the three Sanderson sisters with Bette Midler’s Winifred and Sarah Jessica Parker’s Sarah – stood out with a crooked smile on the right side of her mouth.

The 65-year-old actress revealed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that the smile has now shifted to the left side because the right became too difficult.

Difficult: The 65-year-old actress revealed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that the smile has now shifted to the left side because the right became too difficult

‘It’s on the other side mainly because it’s so hard for me to do it on the side I did it on 30 years ago,’ Najimy began. 

‘I’m sure the fans are going to go into deep detail about why it’s on the other side,’ she joked. 

‘It’s just something I came up with the first week. This is a big comedy, so you don’t have to be subtle or have a 40-page Shakespearean backstory,’ Najimy added.

So hard: ‘It’s on the other side mainly because it’s so hard for me to do it on the side I did it on 30 years ago,’ Najimy began.

Backstory: ‘It’s just something I came up with the first week. This is a big comedy, so you don’t have to be subtle or have a 40-page Shakespearean backstory,’ Najimy added

The actress added they came up with a clever way to explain the smile shift in the film as well.

‘We can justify it because there’s a scene at the beginning where Winnie slaps me, and my mouth goes to the other side, and then she slaps me again and it goes to the other side, and sticks,’ Najimy said.

Director Anne Fletcher previously revealed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that the sequel’s opening sequence will explore the sisters’ origins in the 1600s. 

Clever: The actress added they came up with a clever way to explain the smile shift in the film as well

The opening sequence will feature child actors Taylor Henderson, Juju Journey Brener, and Nina Kitchen as younger versions of Winifred, Sarah and Mary.

The sequence will also feature a young Billy Butcherson (Doug Jones), years before he became Winifred’s lover.

‘The opening sequence of the movie, we get some history of our witches and Billy. We get a little kiss — pardon the pun — of the Billy aspect of it and the world that they lived in and what happened to the witches,’ Fletcher began. 

Younger: The opening sequence will feature child actors Taylor Henderson, Juju Journey Brener, and Nina Kitchen as younger versions of Winifred, Sarah and Mary

‘I always missed that in the first one. Like, what are the witches the way they are? I did have that question, and the script came, and I loved the opening 1600s,’ she said. 

She added that she ‘pushed’ the opening ‘a little bit more,’ so she could introduce the notion that, ‘the 1600s and the now are the same. There’s no difference.’

‘I just want to poke at the irony of it. But, in the joy of the film you get to see the young version of them and have a great time and understand the what and why of what happened to them,’ Fletcher added.