‘Bewitched’ Viewers Had No Idea Samantha's Evil Cousin Was Also Elizabeth Montgomery

Back when crews could count on viewers to completely forget everything that happened on their favorite TV show by the time the next episode rolled around, casting actors for more than one role was no big deal. Stars Hollow was full of doppelgangers. So was Sunnydale. And Carrie Bradshaw rejected Justin Theroux not once but twice.

That wasn’t quite the case when Bewitched writers created the character of Serena, Samantha Stephens’ darker-haired and sluttier but otherwise identical cousin, in the series’ second season. There weren’t any one-shots of Elizabeth Montgomery transforming from everyone’s favorite domestic witch into her sexual revolutionary counterpart, but they made no secret of the fact that it was the same actress. If anything, they assumed viewers would get a kick out of what was little more than an excuse for Montgomery to have fun with skirts and wigs of increasingly inverse sizes.

Apparently, though, audiences of the ‘60s couldn’t tell when the same actor was playing two different characters even at the same time, let alone in different episodes. In fact, they were so taken with the woman behind Serena that they sent her, not Montgomery, fan mail at the studio. To be fair, she was credited under the pseudonym “Pandora Spocks.” (Get it? Like the box the Greek lady seriously regretted opening?) But that wasn’t until the sixth season. Mid-series viewers had no excuse.

That wasn’t the only way Bewitched writers decided to have fun with the case of mistaken identity in the sixth season either. In its 26th episode, “A Chance at Love,” Samantha has to convince a wealthy client of her husband’s advertising agency who has fallen for Serena that they’re different people, eventually solving the problem the only way she knows how: turning him into a parrot. Hey, when all you’ve got is a twitchy nose, everyone looks like a psittacine. This might have only confused viewers further, as the point was that the characters were different people, but you can’t say it didn’t draw attention to the situation.

It seems they weren’t the only fans of Serena, either — crew members reported on at least one occasion seeing Montgomery leave with her husband, Bewitched director William Asher, still dressed as Serena, for some fun at a motel before returning to work. 

Don’t act like you wouldn’t do it.