Tiffani Thiessen is returning to the teen scene — but as a powerful witch this time.
The actress debuts as the formidable Miss Graves in Coven Academy, a new supernatural series from Disney and Freeform about students at an elite magic boarding school in New Orleans. The show premiered on October 1st on Freeform, with the full season dropping the following day on Disney+ and Hulu.
She opened up about the gig, the show's format, and the career choices that brought her here on Tommy DiDario's podcast, "I've Never Said This Before." This marks Thiessen's first real foray into a mystical and magical role, and she admits she signed on quickly for a practical reason: in a drastically changing industry, she simply wants to work, and work well. The call came while she was taking her kids to a Kendrick Lamar concert, and suddenly she was being asked to fly to Vancouver in about four days. She took the part.
What makes Coven Academy particularly unusual is its format. The streaming version is broken down into brief, 15-minute episodes, which Thiessen described as an innovative gamble with today's youth audience. She playfully suggested it is designed for viewers with short attention spans, but also admitted it was much harder to shoot than expected, as the team has to build a complete story arc with a strong payoff within those tight limits. Viewers also won't be able to binge-watch it all at once, as only one batch of episodes drops at a time. She also noted that filming was intense, heavy on special effects and night shoots, which is more demanding now than it was when she was in her early twenties.
There is a sense of "been there, done that" here too. Thiessen, who shot to fame as Kelly Kapowski on Saved by the Bell and later transitioned to adult drama as Valerie Malone on Beverly Hills 90210, knows what it's like to be introduced to an entirely new audience through a teen show.
It happened to her on Netflix's Alexa & Katie, where she discovered that viewers her kids' age knew her from her current work rather than the '90s hits they never went back and watched. On the set of Coven Academy, she acts as a mentor to her young castmates but insists she absorbs just as much from them — and she suspects the show will captivate the younger demographic as well. Her own kids, she joked, don't sit in front of the TV to watch her classic hits, though her daughter has taken a peek.
The podcast episode also had Thiessen revealing a near-miss from her past: she once auditioned to be a Bond Girl, making it to the final group of three actresses considered for the film. As a massive fan of the franchise, the rejection was one of the most devastating moments of her career, and she remembers driving down the coast alone, reflecting on whether she should even continue acting. She managed to get over it — and shared that a call from the Food Network turned her love for cooking into the show Dinner at Tiffani's, followed by two cookbooks alongside her acting career. The advice she gives today to anyone facing an audition room? Find the joy, even if it's a small part on a rough day.
She has also outgrown the darker side of fame. Thiessen reflected on how different it is to be in the public eye today, when exposure is instantaneous and cruel comments are always just a tap away, compared to the days of TMZ and fan magazines, when you could just choose not to look.
She said she is selective about what she consumes on social media, trying to use her platforms only for positive things — food, humor, family, and connection. Intuition, something she wishes she had trusted earlier in life, now guides her choices.
With Coven Academy now streaming, Thiessen is betting that same intuition will spellbind an entirely new generation of viewers who have never met Kelly Kapowski.
