When Sabrina the Teenage Witch debuted on ABC on September 27, 1996, Beth Broderick was 37 years and seven months old. Born February 24, 1959, she played Aunt Zelda, the science-minded, rule-keeping half of the spellcasting household, at an age that read to kids as simply, permanently grown.
The character helped the illusion along. On the show, Zelda and her sister Hilda are 600-year-old witches raising their teenage niece, so every lecture and eye-roll arrived filtered through centuries.
The math feels different now. Anyone who was 8 to 16 during that first season is somewhere between 38 and 46 today, which means much of the original audience has quietly passed the age they once filed under “old enough to be in charge.”
The debut pulled in more than 17 million viewers. Melissa Joan Hart was 20 playing 16-year-old Sabrina, and Caroline Rhea was 32 as the goofier aunt Hilda.
Now 67, Broderick holds on to a piece of the role. A costume necklace still goes with her off set, she told 7NEWS in 2023: “this was Aunt Zelda’s and I wear it all the time.”
