The Bette of the ball! Bette Midler revived her Hocus Pocus character, Winifred Sanderson, complete with voluminous red wig and buck teeth, for a Halloween fundraiser bash on Friday, October 28.
The 70-year-old comedian was a hit on the red carpet at the New York Restoration Project’s 20th anniversary fete. (The actress is the founder of the nonprofit, which brings green space to the city’s five boroughs.) Midler dusted off her iridescent purple and green gown and robe for the event, and even opted for a full face of the iconic makeup: no eyebrows, bright red lip, buckteeth and a red wig piled high on her head.
In her hand, the veteran actress and singer carried a witch’s broom with snarled black hairs at the end.
Midler starred opposite Kathy Najimy and a young Sarah Jessica Parker in the hit 1993 Halloween classic about a trio of centuries-old witches who are resurrected in Salem, Massachusetts, and wreak havoc in the small town.
Fans of the cult classic have speculated that a sequel to the Halloween hit might be in the works after Parker, 51, hinted earlier this month that she’d love a reunion. “I would love that,” she said on Watch What Happens Live. “I think we’ve all been fairly vocal about being very keen, but that hasn’t crated any groundswell of movement.”
Midler agreed in a recent interview with Billboard. “You don’t get to see women doing slapstick too much, and in the movie you can see that we’re having a blast. For the life of me, I can’t understand why there’s not a sequel,” she told the publication. “All the shackles were off, as Donald Trump likes to say, and we were allowed to be as wild as we wanted to be. It was a perfect storm of fun.”
At present, Midler is set to star in the 2017 revival of Hello, Dolly! opposite David Hyde Pierce.
