Star of TEEN WITCH, Robyn Lively spoke to Buzzfeed in 2014 in celebration of the film’s 25th anniversary. She described the first moment she realized the film had become a cult classic and the ways fans of the films have touched her life, “I’ll tell you when it really hit me [that the film was popular]: In the early ’90s, I went to a party with Jason Priestley, who I was dating at the time. We went to a party at Ricki Lake’s house, and she freaked out when she saw me. She’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re Teen Witch! My gay best friend and I love your movie. We know every line, all the dance moves, all the songs.’ That’s when it was still on VHS, and she literally started singing ‘Top That’ and ‘Most Popular Girl.’ It was crazy. That was really the first time I realized it had resonated with people.
[A] bunch of years ago, someone invited me to a midnight screening of it in at this Santa Monica theater, and I didn’t know what to expect. I wondered if anyone would even show up. Well, I was floored to see that people didn’t just come, but they came in costumes! They were dressed like me, singing along to all the songs; you would have thought I was rock star.
I distinctly remember one in San Francisco. At the very end of that show, this guy comes up to me and immediately gets teary-eyed. He says, ‘You have no idea how you and this movie changed my life.’ And I really didn’t have any idea. The movie took on a whole new meaning for me at that point because I never looked at it as something that could actually have an impact on people, and that’s one of the reasons I love it so much.
If you had asked me 10 years ago [if I thought the film would endure], I wouldn’t have thought so. But it does still amaze me that so many people love the movie for so many different reasons. Because of people like that guy in San Francisco who told me it changed his life, Teen Witch is my most favorite thing I’ve ever done. I see how happy it makes people, and that makes me happy. The great thing is that no one realized it was going to become all these things when we were making it. We thought we were making a very serious movie. We didn’t know we were making a cult classic. Although, I don’t think you ever do.”
