Practical Magic > Trivia

An unexpected issue that director Griffin Dunne encountered was the number of takes the lead actresses needed to complete each scene. Sandra Bullock would generally finish in two or three takes. However, Nicole Kidman had just spent the previous eighteen months working with Stanley Kubrick on Eyes Wide Shut (1999), and was now used to doing seventy or eighty takes for a single scene.
The small-town scenes were filmed in downtown Coupeville, Washington, a Victorian-era seaside port town on the south side of Penn’s Cove on Whidbey Island.
The name of Sally’s botanical shop is “Verbena”. Verbena is a flowering plant long associated with divine and supernatural forces.
According to co-writer Akiva Goldsman, the director’s cut was a darker take on the material. Due to Warner Bros.’ marketing and extensive editing, it ultimately became a different version. Goldsman lost his copy of the original cut.
When Aunt Frances and Aunt Jet are leaving the post office, you can clearly see the name “Maria’s Island Post Office” on the wall behind them.
The pool scene near the beginning of the movie with Nicole Kidman’s character is shot on the same set used for the pool scenes in Boogie Nights (1997).
Production designer Robin Standefer created all the interiors for the home, leading to a new career as an in-demand interior decorator. Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor asked Standefer to remodel their home after watching the film.
Based on the 1995 novel of the same name by Alice Hoffman
Timothy Olyphant was only cast in the film Go (1999) after he was fired from this movie and replaced by Aidan Quinn. He ended up staying in the same LA hotel room that had originally been booked for him for Practical Magic while filming Go.
According to Sandra Bullock in the commentary, in the scene where Gillian and Sally get drunk with their aunts, and they sling insults, the actresses actually got drunk. They were drinking some very bad tequila that Nicole Kidman brought.
For the final scene with all the townspeople at the Owens home, the entire population of the town where filming took place was invited to show up in costume as townsfolk.
The black dog that followed Sally’s husband, Michael, on the day of his death was no accident. According to several cultural traditions, a sign of impending death can take the form of a black dog known as a phantom black dog or a hellhound in folklore.