‘Good Witch’s Katherine Barrell Teases What’s Next After Joy’s Family Revelation
Q&A
The mystery surrounding the newest arrival to Middleton in Good Witch Season 6 was solved in the second episode: Joy’s (Katherine Barrell) a member of the family!
After developing some old photos with Cassie (Catherine Bell) and George (Peter MacNeill), Joy discovered the connection: Cassie’s second cousin was Joy’s mother. After that news, “she’s breathing a sigh of relief,” Barrell tells TV Insider.
Here, the actress previews what’s to come from Joy and her family now that the truth is out and reveals why Wynonna Earp fans should watch the Hallmark Channel series.
Joy’s part of the family! How does she feel to have that confirmed?
Katherine Barrell: She’s really found a place to call home for a little while. She’s been on her own for a long time. Her mom passed away when she was 17, so there’s this sense of an ability to start putting her guard down a little bit. When you’re on your own for such a long time, you really build up a lot of defenses. You have to take care of yourself because no one’s really looking out for you. Now she’s slowly starting to realize that finding this new section of her family, she can really start to just relax a little bit and let her guard down and enjoy this next chapter of her life.
(Brooke Palmer/Crown Media)
And she’s welcomed with open arms, of course. How are we going to see her relationships with Cassie and Abigail change as a result of the revelation?
There’s something really lovely about the fact that she’s staying at Grey House, at a family member’s home, and just being in the same house together automatically makes you feel immediately more bonded with somebody and closer because you’re just spending all these intimate moments with them.
What I really love about the relationships between Joy and Cassie versus Joy and Abigail is that they’re very different. Abigail definitely takes a little more time to warm up to Joy. She’s a little more cautious around her whereas Cassie is a little more eager to let her in more quickly. I like that different dynamic between the two, that one of them acts a certain way and the other one has a different meaning.
They have a different energy between them. Cassie has a more maternal energy with Joy, whereas Abigail is more like a sister vibe or a cousin vibe. Because Cassie knew Joy’s mother, there’s this feeling of mothering with Cassie and Joy.
The show keeps it vague when it comes to the “witchcraft.” What are we going to see from Joy in that area?
She definitely has the Merriwick ability, so a lot of what you’re seeing with intuition from Abigail and Cassie, Joy definitely has that gift as well. You’re definitely going to see similar things to the way it comes out in Cassie and Abigail, just a really good intuition, almost knowing things are going to happen before they do, that sort of thing.
Joy’s also helping Martha renovate her new mansion. How does that go and how’s that dynamic?
The dynamic between Martha and Joy is really special. What I love most about the Martha character is she doesn’t hold anything back and she goes for exactly what she wants. It’s a fun dynamic for Joy as she tries to put her own spin on the project and also her own advice. [There’s] definitely a little bit of tension, which makes for some really fun scenes.
(Brooke Palmer/Crown Media)
What about her relationships with everyone else in town? Who does she grow closest to?
There’s going to be two new characters coming on the show that Joy develops a special bond with. Obviously George has a very special place in her heart because she made the discovery she was connected to the family in his darkroom when they were developing the pictures together.
What about her thoughts on Middleton? Does she look at the town differently now that she knows who her family is definitively?
She definitely does. Joy came from a bigger city, and so small town living was not really something she was used to. Now having her family there definitely adds this whole extra element of excitement and there could be a lot of magic in a small town. Whereas maybe before she would have thought that it would be too quiet for her, now there’s this sense that she can really see herself maybe being there a little more long-term.
Joy meets Carter in the next episode and there’s some fun banter with the two. What can you preview about what we’ll see between them?
Carter comes on, and he and Joy have a really fun dynamic with each other. There’s definitely his competitive spark with the two of them right off the bat, and we see some lovely moments where Joy tries to challenge Carter to get her way, and Cassie puts her back in her place in Cassie’s gentle way, but sort of checks her attitude a little bit.
There’s a lovely theme of using your powers for good, so we’ll see Merriwick intuition also come with the ability to sometimes manipulate situations, which we see Joy try to do with Carter. There’s a lovely lesson that Cassie teaches Joy through that experience.
Earpers are obviously eager for Season 4, so what do you think they’ll enjoy most about Good Witch if they tune in while they wait?
Wynonna Earp has its own kind of magic, and so does Good Witch. They’re different shows tonally, but at the center of both of them, there’s very strong family themes and the theme of found family.
(Michelle Faye/Wynonna Earp Season 2, Inc./Syfy)
There’s so many similarities I see between Joy and Nicole. They’re very different people, but when Nicole came to Purgatory, she didn’t have any family and she was on her own and she found her place and found her family, and that’s really the exact journey we see [for] Joy. She’s an outsider. She came from being on her own for a long time and being really used to that, and now she’s found this new sense of family. I really love the parallel between the two shows in that regard.
From a tone perspective, there’s just a lovely quality of magic, which runs through both the shows, and this feeling that there’s something special about each of the worlds they live in, that it’s not quite the world that we live in. It’s just elevated to this extra special level, which I really like.
Good Witch, Sundays, 9/8c, Hallmark Channel
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