There’s one iconic scene in the 1998 film “Practical Magic” that viewers think of when reminiscing. Yes, the margarita scene. The producer who worked on the movie said that particular part of the movie was a top career moment.
Denise Di Novi spoke to People, calling the midnight margaritas moment “a total blast.”
“The locations are so spectacular. We built that amazing house — which we built, believe it or not, on the second film at the studio, Warner Brothers Studios in London. But the first one, we built that beautiful house on San Juan Island in Washington State, and the house has really become a character in its own right. It has its own pages, its own TikTok reels. People sell plans of the house to rebuild it. People are obsessed with the house, particularly the kitchen,” she said.
If you don’t know quite what that means, let’s set the scene.
The Midnight Margaritas Scene
The cursed sisters, who happen to be witches, hear something downstairs that interrupts their sleep. Gillian Owens (played by Nicole Kidman) wakes Sally (played by Sandra Bullock) up in the still of the night. What’s that sound? It sounds like a drilling sound, only to be a blender — the noise coming from the kitchen.
“Midnight margaritas!” the sisters say in unison.
As they go downstair, they are greeted by their two aunts portrayed by Stockard Channing and Dianne West. They hand the sister margaritas before their feet even leave the stairs to land on the kitchen floor. And then — a spell:
Eye of newt, toe of frog, wing of bat, tongue of dog …
Flip the switch, and let the cauldron bubble!
Harry Nilsson’s song “Coconut” plays in the background as the sisters sing along to it.
“It just was so much fun to shoot in that actual beautiful garden, beautiful house in that place. It was one of the best, most fun experiences ever,” Di Novi continued. “Stockard and Diane are just… At that time, they were sort of the Doyen ladies of both theater and film, and they are even more so today. But it was just a great, lovely, lovely group.”
The scene eventually turns dark when the tequila they’ve been using looks familiar to the sisters. When asked where they acquired it, the aunts sang to them, “Somebody left it on the porch!” That’s when it shifted. The man the Owens sisters tried to dispose of might have come back to life after all. The two attempted a spell to bring him back in order to keep them out of trouble with the law.
Don’t worry, there’s a happy ending.
GettyThe Cult Classic That is ‘Practical Magic’
The movie didn’t exactly blow up in the box office or earn any prestigious awards, but it became a cult classic. Di Novi said the location where they shot some of the scenes in Coupeville, Wash., is still visited by tourists who want to see where the Owens sisters roamed.
“I’m always like, ‘That was the most fun scene to shoot I have ever, ever had on any of my many movies.’ It was. Nicole brought real tequila, and Sandy kind of led the charge in that she is a trained dancer and just kind of really got into it, and then everybody else got into it,” Di Novi said.
It was obviously a success as the sequel, “Practical Magic 2,” is scheduled to be released Sept. 11 of this year.
