The actress explained that interviewers would walk into press junkets for the film and “give you that look of like… the stink.”

Sandra Bullock says *Practical Magic *cast was ‘chastised’ for first film: ‘How many women do you need?’

The actress explained that interviewers would walk into press junkets for the film and “give you that look of like… the stink.”

By Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2022. Her work has previously appeared on MTV News, Teen Vogue, and NME.

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September 10, 2026 11:17 a.m. ET

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Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock in ‘Practical Magic’. Credit:

Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection

- Sandra Bullock says critics “chastised” the *Practical Magic *cast over the 1998 film.

- “They were like, ‘How many women do you need in a film? How many tones do you need? Comedy and magic and love and drama?’” she recalled.

- She noted that her experience on the promotional tour for the sequel has been much nicer.

Sandra Bullock is reflecting on some of the hexes that were directed at the original *Practical Magic* upon its release.

During a recent visit to Jake Shane’s *Therapuss* podcast, the Oscar-winning actress and her costar Nicole Kidman explained that it took the 1998 family drama a while to find its audience after it was poorly reviewed by critics.

“People came after us,” Bullock said of the criticism at the time. “They were like, ‘How many women do you need in a film? How many tones do you need? Comedy and magic and love and drama?’ And I was like, ‘Have you lived life at all?’ But back then we were chastised for it.”

Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman in ‘Practical Magic 2’.

Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

The negative reaction was difficult to process at the time.

“There was a lot of shame attached to it,” she admitted. “We sort of went, ‘Oh, we thought we were making something that really was not just educational, but not mean spirited at all.’ It was about doing the right thing and helping others no matter what.”

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As a result, Bullock explained that she was completely taken aback when she discovered that there was an entire coven of midnight-margarita-loving fans of the film on social media years later.

“I was really surprised when it turned out that because of social, there was a whole world that went, ‘No, you did make it for a group of people. Here we are!’” she said. “And if it wasn’t for social, we would not have been able to make a second one.”

She continued, “Everyone came out loud and proud and said, ‘This is us. These are our people.’ ... You don’t have to be* a people *because there’s so many themes and thematics in this story that relate to everybody, every single human being on the planet.”

Bullock added that promoting *Practical Magic* 2 feels even nicer than before because the original did not have “a good press tour.”

“When people walk into the room every five minutes with their questions and they ask the same question, they sort of give you that look of like… the stink,” she said. “They had the stink. It was not pretty, so this feels really, really, really nice.”

Based on Alice Hoffman’s 1995 novel of the same name, Griffin Dunne’s *Practical Magic* starred Bullock and Kidman as sister witches Sally and Gilly Owens. The film followed their journey as they sought to break a family curse that kills any man that they love.

A sequel, titled *Practical Magic 2*, continues the Owens family story as Sally’s daughters Kylie (Joey King) and Antonia (Maisie Williams) grow into their own spiritual powers and continue to work on breaking the curse for good.

Listen to Bullock discuss the films in the clip above.

Original Article on Source

Source: “EW Drama”