Updated September 11, 2026 at 9:35 AM CDT
In Practical Magic, sadness rarely gets the last word.
Someone is grieving, but there is usually a sister nearby. There might be an argument, a joke or, in one of the 1998 film's most memorable scenes, four women dancing around a kitchen.
Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman play sisters Sally and Gillian Owens, women born into a family of witches and a generations-old curse: Any man an Owens woman falls in love with is doomed to die.
The movie, which was adapted from Alice Hoffman's novel Practical Magic, wasn't exactly a blockbuster when it came out. But over the next 28 years it found a devoted audience on streaming platforms. The film also benefited from a surge of interest every Halloween.
"The gratitude goes to streaming, truly, because around this time every year, the film just found its people," Bullock told NPR's Leila Fadel.
Now Bullock and Kidman have gotten the coven back together.
Practical Magic 2 finds Sally's two daughters grown up and Sally once again grieving someone she loved. Hoping to protect her children from the Owens family curse, she has erased their memories of magic and hidden part of their family history from them.
Sally thinks she is keeping them safe. But Bullock said the choice gets at something families do even without magic.
"You think that by not talking about something, children won't experience it. But they will live it out whether you talk about it or not," she said. "Secrets never, never, never remain secrets."
Bullock described the curse as a metaphor for passing on generational trauma.
"If you don't talk about it, if you don't address it, if you don't share it, it's going to keep living on generation after generation," she said.
Bullock was not yet a mother when she made the first Practical Magic. She also had not experienced the loss of a life partner. Her longtime partner, Bryan Randall, died in 2023 after living with ALS.
Hoffman had written Sally's story before Bullock lived through some of those experiences herself.
"To read it and just think, wow, it's parallel," Bullock said. "No matter where I go, I'm bringing whatever I am at that moment."
While working on the new script, Bullock told the writers they could draw from what she had lived through.
"Whatever you want to use, use it. Ask me any question," she said.
But Bullock also told the writers not to lose humor as a coping mechanism for grief?
"It's that delicate balance of sharing grief, but also sharing life, which is very inconvenient," Bullock said. "You're having your meltdown, but then something really funny happens."
For Bullock, grief does not move in a straight line, or follow any rules at all.
"No one knows how to grieve properly, I don't think, because we don't allow people to do it their way," she said.
It can include, she said, "laughter and education and tears and sharing and family and more laughing and then anger."
And the women in Practical Magic 2 are not, as Bullock put it, "grieving the whole time."
"They're just living life with a changed perspective," Bullock said.
The safety of a sister
Sally is not alone as she navigates her changed perspective on life. Her relationship with Gillian remains at the center of Practical Magic 2's story. The sisters fight — sometimes gracefully, sometimes not. In the sequel, Bullock said, there is even a serious betrayal.
But none of that makes their relationship less secure.
"There's the safety of knowing she will always be there for Sally. Sally will always be there for Gillian," Bullock said. "There is no question. They are two halves of a whole."
That safety gives them room, Bullock said, to show "all the colors" of the relationship.
She is also careful in considering how sisterhood is portrayed onscreen. Male relationships, she said, have always involved fights, rescues and expressions of loyalty. Women have more often been "pitted up against each other."
"But the sisterhood that I know is vast," Bullock said.
For her, that sisterhood extends beyond biology. These days, she said, she finds herself wanting to be around the people she feels safest with.
And safety does not mean never inconveniencing one another.
"It's hard for me to ask for help," Bullock said. "But every time I have called and it's been an inconvenience to the person on the other end of the line, they've shown up. And I want to be that person to the people I love."
It is an idea that fits the Owens women particularly well.
They grieve. They fight. They keep things from one another.
And still, the porch light stays on to light their way back to each other.
Practical Magic 2 opened in theaters Thursday.
Editor's note: Some of the material in this story was not included on the radio version that aired on Morning Edition. To listen to the interview, click on the blue button above.
The radio interview was produced by Phil Harrell. The digital version was edited by Treye Green.
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