14 things you probably didn't know about 'Twitches'
Martha Sorren
- "Twitches" (2005) premiered on Disney Channel 15 years ago, but even superfans might not know all the fun facts about the film.
- Tia and Tamera Mowry played the leading twin witches, but Tia actually played Tamera's character in one scene.
- The witchy film shares some similarities with "Sister, Sister," the twins' ABC show from the 1990s.
- Both Tia and Tamera have said they're interested in doing a "Twitches 3."
It's been 15 years since Disney Channel released "Twitches" (2005), and since then, it's become a Halloween classic.
"Sister, Sister" stars Tia and Tamera Mowry played twin witches, Alex and Camryn, who discover each other and their magical abilities just in time to save their home in another dimension.
Read on for some interesting things you probably didn't know about "Twitches."
The movie is based on a book series.
The first book in the "Twitches" series, "The Power of Two," came out in 2001, and nine more novels followed before the Disney Channel movie came out in 2005.
The main characters weren't Black in the book series.
In a Facebook video from September, Tia Mowry said that the twins in the original book series weren't Black, but Disney Channel changed those character descriptions to cast her and her sister in the film.
"... They ended up changing the characters to being African American twins to, you know, fit my sister and myself, and I thought that was just really, really cool to do," she said.
The twins' witch names are meaningful.
Alex and Camryn's witch names are Artemis and Apolla, after Greek gods of the moon (Artemis) and sun (Apollo).
Alex has a moon amulet necklace and is more powerful at night, and Camryn has a sun necklace and is stronger during the daytime.
The movie's villain, Thantos, is also named after a Greek god — Thanatos, the personification of death.
The movie shares some similarities with the show "Sister, Sister."
Before they appeared in "Twitches" together, Tia and Tamera starred on ABC's "Sister, Sister" in the 1990s.
The plot of the sitcom is pretty similar to "Twitches" — minus the witchcraft — in that the twins are separated at birth and find each other later in life.
Plus, both in the film and on the show they reconnect in a clothing store.
The cast and crew couldn't always tell the twins apart.
Tia and Tamera are identical twins, so according to a special collector's edition of the DVD, they would sometimes play tricks on the cast and crew because they couldn't always tell them apart.
Tia ended up playing her sister's character, Camryn, in one of the big scenes.
On a 2018 episode of "The Real," Tamera shared that Tia was actually playing Camryn during the birthday-party scene.
The actress was doing the Lifetime show "Strong Medicine" at the time, and there was a scheduling conflict, so the production staff asked Tia if she could play Tamera's character for two days of filming.
"And Tia was like, 'Sure, why not? You know, that's my twin, I can do it,'" Tamera said.
The hair and makeup teams drew a fake mole on Tia's face, changed her hair, and made it work.
Writer Dan Berendsen also worked on a few other witchy shows and films.
In addition to helping write the script for the "Twitches" series, Dan Berendsen has written for ABC's "Sabrina the Teenage Witch," Disney Channel's "Wizards of Waverly Place," and the film "Halloweentown High" (2004).
Camryn's house is featured in another famous movie from the early 2000s.
As Twitter user @drew__dorsey pointed out, the exterior shots of Camryn's mansion in "Twitches" feature the same home that was used for Regina George's in "Mean Girls" (2004).
The mansion is located in Toronto and you can see its distinct white door frame, columns, and arched doorway in both films. Even the wreaths on the door and silver cars in the driveway look similar.
The actress who played Camryn and Alex's mom is only nine years older than them.
Kristen Wilson, the actress who played Camryn and Alex's mom, Miranda, is just nine years older than the twins.
Tia and Tamera were both 27 when they played 21-year-olds in the film, and Wilson was 36.
Tia and Tamera came up with one of the most memorable lines in the film themselves.
In the same September Facebook video, Tia said that the actresses came up with the "go twitches" chant that Alex and Camryn do throughout the series themselves.
"I think we just started doing it, like together — like automatically. It was just a twin thing that we started doing," she said. "We were like in sync, we didn't even think about it."
Tia said her son doesn't like the film.
Tia told People in August that her son, Cree, is not the biggest "Twitches" fan.
"'Twitches' was on and he was like, 'Eh,' and changed the channel after five minutes," she told the publication. "[I'm like], 'Are you freaking kidding me? That's your mother — not only your mother, your auntie. What's the problem?'"
One of the supporting characters was played by a different actress in "Twitches Too."
In the first film, "Schitt's Creek" star Jennifer Robertson played Illeana, one of the twins' protectors. But actress Leslie Seiler took over the role in the 2007 sequel, "Twitches Too."
Both "Twitches" and "Twitches Too" have alternate endings.
In the first movie, instead of Camryn and Alex defeating Thantos and going back to their birthday party, an alternate ending shows them trapped in the magical dimension without destroying the villain.
In the alternate ending of the sequel, their mother's evil twin sister, Minerva, shows up.
Tamera said that they're working on getting a third movie made.
In June, Tamera told E! News that she and Tia are both on board for another sequel, if Disney Channel will make it.
"What y'all didn't know, my sister and I were already kind of like working on a 'Twitches 3,' kind of, a situation," she said.
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