After waiting decades, Hocus Pocus 2 has finally arrived with new and familiar faces. The Sanderson sisters find themselves in 2022 Salem after two young girls, Becca and Izzy, accidentally light the Black Flame candle and revive the witchy trio. Whitney Peak plays Becca, a fiercely independent teenager with a love for the spooky side of life.
Whitney told HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY during the Hocus Pocus 2 press junket that it was “terrifying in a weird way” to see Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy in character as the Sanderson sisters for the first time “because they’re so good at what they do. I mean, it’s hard to see them as just their individual selves. Sarah Jessica and Bette and Kathy, it’s hard to see them when they have the costumes and not be intimidated by them.”
She added, “It was very, very cool to watch them perform and be in character and just in and out of it. It was just very admirable.”
The ending of the film features Winifred enacting an all-powerful spell, which causes her to lose Sarah and Mary. After realizing that she can’t live without them, Winifred rejoins her sisters. “My powers are nothing without my sisters,” Winifred says near tears. She leaves Book behind with Becca, Izzy, and Cassie.
There is a pivotal post-credits scene that shows Gilbert’s cat Cobweb walking around the magic shop. Cobweb crosses paths with a box that read “Black Flame candle #2.” HollywoodLife had to ask Whitney if she’d return for a possible Hocus Pocus 3.
“I mean, I would be down. But I don’t know if there is. I feel like everybody keeps asking me and I’m like, there is kind of a post-credits scene that leaves the door open, but you didn’t hear from me,” the Gossip Girl alum quipped. She noted that she viewed that final scene “as there was maybe potentially a second black flame candle, and somebody’s going to have to light it.”
Becca, Izzy, and Cassie could absolutely be the next generation of witches if the Hocus Pocus universe wants to expand. “Maybe it’s my turn to put some kids in place,” Whitney said.
The actress revealed if she felt any pressure about her role in Hocus Pocus 2, one of the most highly-anticipated Disney sequels. “I think definitely, initially, it was weird because I had also just finished the first season of Gossip Girl, which also had like a cult following,” the 19-year-old said. “That was stepping into something that already has such a huge reputation, and so it was kind of, okay, here we go again. I kind of had to just separate myself from that and just actually focus on the job and try not to think too much about how people are going to react to it before I’ve even made it, if that makes sense. I was just kind of trying to keep that thought out of my head and just follow Anne’s direction. She made it very easy to kind of navigate the character and the story and how it was written. It felt very true to the original movie, while also being very contemporary.”
Hocus Pocus 2 at its core is all about sisterhood. For Whitney, family is everything, whether it be your blood or chosen family. “In real life, I actually have two older sisters and I have one older brother. I’m the youngest one in my family, so just my sense of family and community, keeping the people that I love close to me, is so embedded in me because it’s always kind of been like… the five of us moved from Uganda into Canada and had to relearn this entire society. So we’ve always kind of been around each other, just like me, my mom and my siblings,” she said.
Whitney continued, “And then, of course, the family that you choose, which is your friends and your very tight circle of the few individuals that really make you feel seen and heard and just safe. I definitely resonate with that in Becca and in Zoya [from Gossip Girl]. Just that sense of sisterhood and taking care of the people that you love and making sure that anybody who has that kind of access to you is not just a random person. They have to be important.”
The 19-year-old was excited to take on a role on Hocus Pocus 2 because she thought it would “be a challenge” for her. “As a little girl, I’m sure I always wanted to have magic powers and ride around and be a witch or something. It was fun to picture myself doing that in my head and then actually getting to do it in a movie was really insane,” Whitney told HollywoodLife.