Beth Broderick Almost Got Bit by a Gator onSabrina the Teenage Witch— andThat's Not Even Her Craziest Set Story (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Melissa Joan Hart (left) star of ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch,’ with Beth Broderick in the late 1990s.Photo:Kirk McKoy/Los Angeles Times via Getty

Kirk McKoy/Los Angeles Times via Getty

While filmingSabrina the Teenage Witch, Beth Broderick remembers she had close encounters with a number of live animals  — including an alligator who nearly bit her!

Beginning in 1996, Broderick starred on the show for seven seasons alongsideCaroline RheaandMelissa Joan Hart. She and Rhea played otherworldly aunts Hilda and Zelda Spellman to Hart’s teenage witch, Sabrina.

In a recent exclusive interviewwith PEOPLE, Broderick, 65, recounted appearing in one scene with “an alligator on a leash.”

She added: “I was like okay, that could be my leg. Okay, let’s not poke the alligator anymore.”

As strange a moment as it was, Broderick said that the cast “had crazy stuff like that happen on the show all the time.”

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Melissa Joan Hart (as Sabrina Spellman), with her aunts, Caroline Rhea (as Hilda) and Beth Broderick (as Zelda) in 1997.Bob D’Amico/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty

Bob D’Amico/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty

In a different incident, a lion on set walked through an electric fence and got loose — “he just walked through it and didn’t care,” Broderick shared.

But it was yet another moment — involving a tuxedo-clad chicken! — that Broderick said was her favorite story from her time onSabrina.

“I was walking from my trailer to the set one day and I hear this crazy commotion in the costume room, and I look in, and our costumer Diane is trying to measure a chicken for a tuxedo, and that chicken did not want to wear a tuxedo,” she said. “It was just the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. And I just thought to myself, who else goes to work and sees that?”

“I mean, that is kind of a singular experience,” she added. “And it ended up wearing that tuxedo, it did it. But I don’t think he liked it.”

As Broderick explained, such moments were inevitable on a show about magic — in large part because the crew didn’t rely on modern technology like CGI.

“It was a wild show. You had to shoot everything in real time and practical effects and stuff. It was quite an experience and one you can never forget,” she said. “That’s the way the show was, you made magic out of mole hills … made magic out of thin air.”

source: people.com