Actor Emily Hampshire is well-known for her work in such shows as Schitt’s Creek and Chapelwaite. Now, in her graphic novel debut, she turns her storytelling talents to witchcraft and Jell-O pools. Amelia Aierwood, Basic Witch (Z2 Comics), which Hampshire wrote with comics veteran Eliot Rahal and is illustrated by Kristen Gudsnuk and Ames Liu, follows the misadventures of a teen witch, the black sheep sister of a famous magical family. Forbidden to do magic, Amelia refers to herself as “The Aierwood Family Disaster” due to her “tendency to ruin everything.” While casting a spell to keep her adoptive brother warm, for example, she accidentally turned him into a yeti (later nicknamed “Spaghetti”). The Aierwoods are about to star in their own reality show—and Amelia gets written out of it. With the support of Spaghetti and her new friend Neila, Amelia begins to investigate her true talents, which may or may not involve hoagies. Hampshire spoke with PW over Zoom about acne-covered cryptids, brand deals, and the freedom of not knowing the rules. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
What made you gravitate toward a graphic novel format for this story?
It had never crossed my mind, doing a graphic novel. An agent of mine had left agenting to follow his passion to comic books, and he went to this company called Z2, and they’re a company that helps musicians tell their story through graphic novels. He reached out to me, like, would you ever want to do a graphic novel? I’d never thought about it before. And I was wondering why he thought I would want to. He pitched it to me as, “in a graphic novel, you can do anything!” And I’m like, “Anything? Like a Jell-O pool?”
That kind of sold me—I don’t have to worry about a budget; I don’t have to worry about health and safety with the Jell-O pool. So I was like, I can come up with a story, but I don’t draw. If you’ve seen the book, there’s a drawing of mine at the back which illustrates why I didn’t illustrate the book. He kind of set me up with the most perfect collaborators that I could have ever dreamed of. I had a lot of artists on it. Kristen Gudsnuk was the main artist, and she just lived Amelia. Eliot Rahal, who’s my cowriter, has more of a 13-year-old girl inside his soul than I do. That’s how it started, and now it’s kind of all I want to do.
The graphic novel, like film and television, is such a visual art form. How did your craft as an actor influence the way you wanted to tell this story?
I didn’t know this going into it, but it’s all the best parts about being an actor without any of the performance anxiety or rejection. I got to play Spaghetti, who I would never be cast as. I would literally do that—I would Zoom with Kristen and I would act out the parts. There was this one part right at the beginning when Amelia is eating Jell-O, and I remember Kristen had drawn Amelia really beautifully in the pool—she looked so gorgeous. And I was like, “This is how I would eat Jell-O,” and I had it all over my face. From that point on, we really got each other.
I think what I didn’t know about writing a graphic novel, and what I knew about filmmaking, was helpful in a way. I didn’t know what I couldn't do. There's this part in Amelia where I really wanted the reality show in the book to look different. For example—nobody but me will probably know this—but Spaghetti has acne. He has acne outside of the show, and inside of it, he doesn’t. And every time we were going to go to print, I was like, “Wait, he’s missing his acne outside of the show!”
There was one part where I really wanted you to see them inside the show, and walking out in the same panel. And they were like, “Well, we can’t do that because it’s different artists, and you can’t.” And I was like, “Why not?” Then I just did a terrible collage, and I’m like “Why can’t you?” We ultimately did it. I felt like a lot of the artists were excited to do something different, and have the characters fall out of panels. I didn’t know you weren’t allowed to do that. So it was a learning curve, but in a great way.
So you got to be more experimental because you weren’t aware of the supposed “rules?”
Yeah! It reminds me of the beginner’s mind. I’ve been an actor since I was 11, so as an actor, I know what I can't do, what I can, how to hit my mark. But I look back to when I started, and not knowing those rules sometimes was way better. I’d do things that you wouldn’t think of after you’re practiced and experienced. I think it’s always good to go back to that mindset, which this helped me do.
Did you have any favorite characters to create?
They’re all like my children, so asking me to choose between them…. But I do have to say, Spaghetti was something that started it. [Hampshire displays a yeti stuffed animal.] This is my son, Stumbs. I knew I wanted a yeti, and I wanted him to be named Spaghetti—just because. But everything was kind of from my life. Neila is my real-life best friend. If anyone ever gets the opportunity to cartoonize their best friend, it is the greatest thing in the world. And Amelia is not not me. Even though I could play her mother, my soul is teenaged.
Amelia simultaneously has an imaginative ego (“Finally…everyone will see how awesome I actually am…and DESPAIR!”) and a very self-deprecating outlook (“I have a tendency to ruin everything”), often within the same scene—which I found very relatable! How did you perfect that balance?
I didn’t think about making her relatable; I just wanted to make her honest, flaws and all. And it was me. That’s me. It also came from watching The Kardashians. This is a family of real sisters, and what if I had been born into this family? I would be the worst Kardashian ever. I would have pizza on my face all the time, I’d get stuck in the waist trainer, everything. So Amelia partly came from imagining if I was the black sheep sister—the bad Kardashian.
And Amelia literally gets written out of the family’s reality show.
If I watch something of mine as an actor, I don’t look at my work and think, “I’m so funny there!” But I looked at this, because it’s such a collaborative thing, and when I saw Amelia half in the frame, I couldn’t let go of that joke. I was like, in every single one, “Can we get, like, a little more—” [Hampshire pushes herself half out of the Zoom frame]. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything that just continues to make me happy. There are all these Easter eggs in it too, stuff from my work that Kristen would put in, and I’d get to be surprised by. The collaborative thing is so special because I would say something like, “a Jell-O pool,” and then Kristen would come back with a Jell-O pool but along the side it says, “Running allowed. Cool ppl only.” Working with people who take what’s in your head, and then one-up it and one-up it, is the greatest.
There are a lot of really clever band t-shirt jokes, like “Sonic Elders” and “Asphalt: Incanted and Enchanted.”
That’s because Neila, in real life, always wears band t-shirts. I found out you’re not allowed to use that, but Kristen was like, “There’s the rule of parody…” So Kristen would come up with these things that were so great. I had Neila Zoom with Kristen, and Kristen asked what Neila normally wears, and that’s what Neila wears, and those are her skirts. I never thought that the greatest activity of all time is just taking you and making you a cartoon. It’s like creating a Bitmoij.
Amelia’s family made their fortune by capitalizing on the mystical. Did you have any particular inspirations for this?
Definitely the Kardashians in that I think they do their marketing really well for what they do. I’m impressed by it. But Amelia’s not good at selling, or doing the thing that you’re supposed to do. When she tries, she’s terrible. But when she actually does her own thing—that she thinks is “stupid”—it turns into something special.
As an actor who’s on Instagram, there are a lot of things like brand deals that come along. It was a whole new world for me. There are certain things that will pay you a lot of money, but I couldn’t do anything that wasn’t authentically me because I’d be so bad at it. Like, I want to do it. I want to sell out. But then I’d do a post and be like, “Oh my god, I can’t do this. I’m going to ruin your product by trying to make this!” So I found that when I aligned with things—like Nutella, I did a Nutella campaign—they allowed me to do my own thing. I even did this Delta faucets partnership. Their whole pitch was about somebody who’s kind of an idiot with how to use the faucet. When you lean into your own thing, you don’t have to sell. So that was the inspiration for that.
Also, as a female-led family, the Kardashians are a business. These are businesswomen. I know a lot of people make fun of them and stuff—and I make fun of them—but there is something to be respected in that. And then to see that contrast, in Amelia’s case: that the thing you think is shit is your magic.... I really wanted her to have something that she kind of imagined when she was little—that Amelia would, with her magic, make these sandwiches with a witch thing burned in, and everybody would love them—but then she thought they were stupid because that’s what she did when she was little. But they do say that the thing that you did when you were a kid, like, when you were seven, is the thing you’re meant to do.
Were you acting or writing when you were seven?
I always wrote. I always wrote really emo poems—they were actually songs with stolen tunes, but really emo poems. But in grade three, we had to do a thing for “Learn to Read Week,” and I wrote, directed, and starred in a play that I then made the kids I did it with give me flowers for after. It’s something that I talk about in therapy a lot, because I’m like, who was I? Because I became someone who is so—I’m Canadian, so I’m very overly self-deprecating and would never, in a million years, stage giving myself flowers. So I’m constantly trying to get back to the confidence of that girl.
Can we hope to see more of Amelia in the future?
Yes. This, to me, wasn’t just a book. I want an Amelia-verse. I want a musical, like Wicked meets Matilda. I want to do a show, I want to do a prequel, I want to do a lot! I have a lot of dreams for Amelia.
I just realized I’m wearing Spaghetti’s “I’m Real” shirt [a blue t-shirt Spaghetti wears in the comic that says “I’m Real”]. And I actually didn’t wear it just for this interview; I literally haven’t taken it off for, like, three days, because I love it. It’s like life imitating art imitating life imitating t-shirt.
