Salem the Cat Walks the Red Carpet at ‘The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’ Premiere

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina celebrated the upcoming series at its premiere on Friday and it wasn’t just the human stars of the Netflix series who took a stroll down the red carpet. Salem the Cat had his moment in the spotlight, too.

As part of the premiere, a sleek black cat — with dapper tuft of white fur on his chest — made his appearance and as you can see in the photos shared on Twitter below, he even posed for the cameras, representing like a good familiar should.

Now, some fans may notice that the red carpet Salem looks a little different than the Salem they got a peek at in a recent clip from the Netflix series. The Salem in that clip appears to be solid black, but as that very clip showed Sabrina’s Salem isn’t exactly an ordinary cat. There’s a darker edge to whatever the creature is who becomes Sabrina’s iconic familiar — he just happens to take the form of a cat. Maybe the white tufted version is his party look.

The darker tone behind Salem’s origin on the show appears to be very much in keeping with the overall feel for the series. The next major series to be based on Archie Comics in recent years, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina will follow in the footsteps of The CW’s Riverdale in having a darker tone. The Sabrina Spellman character actually almost appeared on Riverdale, though plans for that changed when Riverdale started coming into its own.

“During season 1 of Riverdale — before Riverdale exploded and found its footing as sort of a noir, crime, pulp show — we had said, ‘Maybe Season 2 will be like [the comic] Afterlife With Archie,” showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa told EW. “We’ll do a big genre switch and it will be horror, and it will be Afterlife and Sabrina could come and be the antagonist. There was even a time when we talked about the Season 1 cliffhanger being the arrival of Sabrina.”

Sabrina’s arrival may not have happened on Riverdale, but it did find a home as a standalone series on Netflix with Kiernan Shipka starring as the series’ titular witch. However, Sabrina’s trusty sidekick Salem got his own chance to walk to red carpet, Shipka told Vulture in an interview in September that she’s actually allergic to the cats that portray him on the series — something she discovered upon breaking into hives when handling one of the five cats who play Salem.

“The cat is the one cast member I don’t get along with,” Shipka revealed. “The cats are like [the various actors who played] Bobby Draper [on Mad Men]”.

What do you think about Salem the Cat walking the red carpet? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

The first season of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina premieres on Netflix on October 26th.