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Nearly a year into our real-life time warp, the brains behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe gave us WandaVision, a show about the enormous lengths to which a grief-stricken superhero might go to conjure some approximation of normalcy. For Wanda Maximoff, played by Elizabeth Olsen, that means cheery sitcom bliss alongside her late love, The Vision (Paul Bettany), as they cycle, decade by decade, through riffs on television’s greatest hits.
But the scene-stealing role, of course, belongs to Kathryn Hahn. When the series opens in the black-and-white 1950s, she’s there in a curl set and wasp-waisted skirt playing Agnes, the perky neighbor next door who cracks jokes about her mother-in-law. In the ’80s episode, she hams it up in a curly Cher wig and sweatband, while the rest of her outfit—pink leggings, purple legwarmers—suggests a well-worn Jane Fonda cassette in the VCR. If Marvelheads were scouring for Easter eggs about the character’s real identity (it arrives in episode 7, along with an earworm jingle featuring Hahn’s telltale cackle), the rest of us heard her loud and clear in other ways. “Oh, this is gonna be a gas!” she squeals early in the show, promising housebound viewers a reprieve from uneasy reality. Another time, she quips, “How is anybody doing this sober?” The answer is: We’re not!
Vulture has deemed this moment the “Hahnaissance”; memes of Hahn’s WandaVision character—a witchy wink, mouth agape—have lately lit up the internet. It wouldn’t be the first time the actor found viral success in the midst of the pandemic. (Her family’s abridged production of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, starring a trio of American Girl dolls, is one for the time capsule.) But Hahn, a social media holdout, isn’t scrolling newsfeeds. “We have to walk the dogs,” she told me recently at the end of this phone interview, describing the night ahead with her husband, Ethan Sandler, and two kids. “We’re attempting to make a baked potato bar.”
That set-up takes me back to the early aughts—which, in WandaVision land, would have seen her character wearing velour pants with “Naughty” spelled out in crystals across the backside. Here, she talks about ’80s hair mishaps, her days working at a supermodel-favorite salon, and the rewards of exploring the “nooks and crannies” of women’s lives onscreen.
Vanity Fair: You once told Stephen Colbert that your kids hadn’t really seen your performances because “Mommy’s body of work is not for children.” What about WandaVision—are they watching?
Kathryn Hahn: They can’t really tell me I’m cool yet—but I think they’re finally getting around to thinking I’m cool since I’ve been in the show. It’s something we can watch together, which has been really fun, especially during quarantine. Your mom’s never going to be cool, so they can’t say it out loud, but they definitely linger around more and are asking more questions.
The show hops through sitcom eras. Which period did you find yourself wanting to linger in?
I think the ’80s because I’m a kid of the ’80s, so it always feels really nostalgic—that kind of music; even the clothes I got to wear were just my dream clothes. I was, like, Oh, just like Isabel Marant right now: fold-over black pants and mules and a French cuff. I would say probably the ’80s because it’s all closest to home, style-wise. I love big hair.
What was your own experience in the ’80s growing up in Ohio? Did you have a perm or feathered bangs full of hairspray? Was there a Jane Fonda cassette in the VCR?
There was not a Jane Fonda cassette, but my dad, I remember, purchased a rewind machine. I don’t even know if you know what those are, but if you wanted to preserve your VCR, you would get a separate machine that would just rewind your tape before you returned them to the library or Blockbuster. It was as big as your VCR, and it would sit on top of or beneath your VCR—and it was just simply to rewind, so you wouldn’t wear out your VCR. And I did all of it. I had a perm, but then I never got another perm, so I had straight hair and then just fried perm hair on the bottom. And I would put in Sun-In—do you remember it? It was a [lightening] spray. Going back to the ’80s, I smell Nair. I smell Jean Naté After Bath Splash, of which we had, like, a gallon that turned into probably rubbing alcohol. You never could finish it. I just see so much Aqua Net on my hair, trying to get my bangs to pick up and they just never did. I got a leather motorcycle jacket, for, like, a hundred bucks, that I wore the shit out of. And then I had a mesh—literally a mesh—vest that was hot pink that I would wear over a shirt with a piano keys tie. I just thought I was so cool. And maybe I was! Probably not. I really wanted it all to go together, but it just never gelled for me.
The Marvel universe is usually so chaste. What does it mean to be the character who brings in the sex jokes?
I would keep turning to Lizzie and Paul during the making of this and be, like, “I can’t believe that this is my entrance into the Marvel world. This is so bananas to me.” It just felt like a sense of freedom. And I’ll never forget being pitched the show by Matt Shakman, the director, and Jac Schaeffer, the writer, because I was, like, “This is so incredible, what you guys are proposing. I’m so flabbergasted that this can exist in the MCU.” In terms of whatever rules I thought would be in place and whatever preconceived notions I had of Marvel, that just went out the window. So of course, I was in an ’80s outfit making sex jokes—that makes total sense in this world.
Initially, we meet you as Agnes, who is this kind of jaunty comedienne. How did you relate to her?
I wish that I had her confidence because I certainly do not in my real life. I guess I could pretend that I do, but I don’t always. And I certainly don’t relate to the offering of unsolicited advice, but I do relate to Agnes’s need and love of my girlfriends, and definitely how important those friendships are, almost paramount to any other. I shouldn’t say that—I love my husband more than anything—but my girlfriends have been really such an imperative part of my life.
You’d show up with a roast chicken at their back door any day.
Exactly, exactly. I will always call before I show up, just let the record show.
WandaVision has funny ads for bath bubbles and things embedded in the first few episodes. If you were to interrupt this conversation with a plug for a product from your own bathroom, what would you do an advert for?
I was going to say toilet paper, but it would probably be Aquaphor because it has a multitude of uses. We just kind of go through it nonstop in this house. It works on cuticles; lips; cracked, dry elbows. I love Aquaphor!
You’ve mentioned in passing that you once worked at a hair salon. Tell me about that part of your life—were you giving people the Rachel?
No one trusted me with any sort of hair ... hair appliances—I don’t even know the word! That’s how badly you wouldn’t trust me with anything. The guys actually got together and got me a Mason Pearson hairbrush for Christmas one year to be, like, “Honey, brush your hair.” But I worked at Garren New York, when it was back at Henri Bendel, which was, like, the fanciest hair salon in the world. My cousin, George Hahn, got me the job as a receptionist there. It was the early ’90s, so it was the height of the supermodel. Linda Evangelista would come in, and Shalom Harlow. I remember opening up early for Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. It was this magical world of people getting cappuccinos with their blow-dries, and I didn’t even know people paid to just get their hair blown out. I was like, “Well, this is a completely different world than anything that I could have imagined—let alone pay 85 bucks for it.” It just blew my mind, but they were so kind, everybody that worked there. I just remember it being a lot of fun. I also remember having one black suit that I would have to wear—it was from Banana Republic—and I had to have it dry cleaned so many times that it started getting shiny on the shoulders. But anyways, always grateful to my cousin George for getting me that gig!
Did you have some super chic cut at the time because someone at Garren was doing your hair?
Yeah, I was a little bit experimented on. My favorite was when I had these two Anne Bancroft kind of skunk stripes in the front that were pretty rad. But I then had to do my hair in the morning, and I remember being in my studio apartment with my then-boyfriend, now-husband, and he woke up to me having a full-on meltdown because my round brush was totally twisted in my hair and I couldn’t get it out!
You strike me as someone who seems very clued-in to self-presentation, but also not wrapped up in the inanities of Hollywood—like you somehow sail coolly above it.
Oh, I don’t know about that. I would say that not having social media really helps, because I just really don’t know what’s happening [laughs]. In my twenties, I think it was a different story. [At that age], I think this is true for a lot of women, you have a case of the “I wish I”—you know, comparison, drama—and it just never served me. I had to become my own bird and trust in my own bird, and not worry about that. Just have respect for everybody’s own path and just be O.K.. I just don’t want to waste time on that nonsense.
I love clothes. I love dressing up. I love makeup, but I also have a daughter and I just don’t want her to get too wrapped up in seeing me wrapped up in that crap. So I just want to put it in its rightful place. I love my job more than that, I guess.
So many of your roles have explored different facets of women’s sexuality: coupled and solo, miscarriage and pregnancy, orgasm and the lack of orgasm. What is the personal reward for you in that topography of subject matter—and is there some element of PSA?
I certainly don’t go into a part thinking that way, or the bird’s-eye view of it, but I suppose I am attracted to showing the totality of a person’s experience that happens to be a woman’s, and also the nooks and crannies that aren’t always exposed in that woman’s particular age. I’m attracted to that, I am—because I know the older I get, I still am the same person I was when I was in my twenties. I remember when I was in my twenties, seeing movies with a woman my age now in it, and thinking that she was so old [laughs] and different. And now that I’m that age, I feel the same! I’m happy that there are parts that are being written, and that there are audiences that want to dig into the nooks and crannies of a totality of the experiences of being this age—and onward.
Is there a facet of some future self that you envision diving into at some point?
Oh, for sure. Growing older, there’s so much left—so much left—to shine a light on. I mean, I think menopause is crazy psychedelic. There’s so much left to explore in a woman’s, and a person’s, experience, for sure.
I remember reading an article a couple years ago about the incidence of schizophrenia around menopause, which had long been overlooked. And in the beauty industry, there is now a rise of menopause-focused skin-care lines, when the narrative used to just be: Don’t get old.
It’s completely wrapped in invisibility! We just pretend that it doesn’t exist, and then all of a sudden...
Recently someone tweeted something like: “I feel like we should go back and put Kathryn Hahn in Big Little Lies.” In the spirit of WandaVision helicoptering into the TV canon, is there a show that you’d want to crash for fun? The long-lost niece to Moira Rose, or a next-gen Samantha?
Oh my god, there are so many that would be so fun. I would just love to be in a motel room next to Moira Rose—that would just be fan-tas-tic. And meet up in the lobby? That would just be amazing. I’d love to be in Broadchurch, somewhere along that sea coast with Olivia Colman. I would love to just walk into Fleabag’s cafe holding a Guinea pig with [Phoebe Waller-Bridge], or to meet up with her on a meditation retreat and have to be real quiet.
Last thing, for fun: If there could be a WandaVision beauty or wellness product tie-in, what would it be? A housewife workout? A vibrator with superpowers, à la Gwyneth’s that recently sold out in a day?
No way, did it?
Yeah, it launched on Valentine’s Day and was gone in a flash. What would be the WandaVision product?
I mean, honestly, I would want to bring back some sort of TV dinner if it was really good. Maybe I’m just thinking of what I want now during the shutdown [laughs]. I want a high-quality, put-it-in-the-oven [tray] with the dessert in the corner, your vegetables, a roll, all of it in one. A really high-quality TV dinner, I think, would be an awesome WandaVision tie-in, because then you could watch the show with a full meal that would be really delicious. It would be kind of kitschy in just the right way, and it could be tied into whatever era so you could watch the show. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it!
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