The idea of a small-screen update on the Addams Family never seemed like a surefire bet, despite the property’s name recognition. But Wednesday, focusing on the kooky brood’s morbid and emotionally constipated teenager, was an out-of-the-gate hit for Netflix when it premiered in November 2022. Within several weeks it was the streamer’s second-most watched English-language series of the year, and a pair of Golden Globes nominations followed — for young star Jenna Ortega as well as the series itself.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be such a surprise — mixing supernatural, coming-of-age, mystery, black comedy and, of course, Gothic elements, Wednesday has a little bit of something for everyone. And, of course, it has Tim Burton, who directed four of the first season’s eight episodes and is back with the same quantitative lift for season two — the first half of which dropped in early August, and the final four episodes of which release September 3.
Co-created for television by Miles Millar and Alfred Gough, the second season takes place at a rebuilt Nevermore Academy, a private boarding school for outcasts and monsters, and finds Wednesday again putting her psychic abilities to use against an entirely new tormentor. The show also features Wednesday’s parents, Gomez and Morticia Addams (Luis Guzman and Catherine Zeta-Jones), her Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen), her mortuary mogul Grandmother Hester Frump (Joanna Lumley), and a colorful assortment of other characters.
Recently, Brent Simon had an opportunity to take part in a pair of global press conference availabilities for Wednesday, which has already been renewed for a third season. Excerpts from the conversations with cast members and show-runners Millar and Gough follow, condensed for the sake of clarity and brevity:
Question: There’s an animated scene in episode one that evokes the Gothic poetic tone of your early work. Do you feel like you’re reconnecting with the romantic, melancholic version of Tim Burton from the early years?
Tim Burton: Well, I mean, I started out as an animator, so my first film was a short, stop-motion animated film, and it just fit the storyline with this because it’s just a story being told by kids, and so we wanted to give it a kind of a quality like it was back when I was a student just making an animated film out of found objects and kind of on a low budget, because we couldn’t film this sequence in live action, it would have been too expensive. So it just fit with a weird-children-telling-a-weird-story-by-a-fireplace (vibe), and so it was fun for me to do that again.
Question: Jenna, what do you enjoy the most about your character?
Jenna Ortega: I mean, really her strength and her confidence, I think. Most oftentimes when people pick apart a character, you have character discussions about what makes them insecure and shy and what quality they (have they) would hate to admit, and Wednesday just doesn’t really have any of that. She’s just so clearly and obviously herself. So it’s nice to step into those shoes. But then also… I’m trying to think of the best way to say this, but she kind of demands everything around her and the qualities that she possesses, I feel like there’s certain things, even when I was discovering and figuring out how does she stand or how does she carry yourself… you know, it’s very, very obvious when something isn’t Wednesday or it doesn’t suit her, (and therefore when) I’m falling out of character. So it’s almost like she comes with a list of rules, which is helpful. It’s a great guideline, and anytime I feel lost or confused in a scene, I just kind of have to go back to those qualities or that posture, or the teacups on the head.
Question: Morticia and Gomez are not your average parents. How do you feel they evolve in season two, when Wednesday grows darker, bolder and perhaps more distant?
Catherine Zeta-Jones: We were just thrilled that Miles and Al incorporated the family into season two, you know? They dangled the carrot for us in season one, and I remember leaving the set going, “Are you sure there isn’t anything else possibly we could do?” (laughs) So, it was wonderful that they created such a beautiful arc for us to play with within the world that they’ve created. And also, that Morticia and Gomez and all the Addams… the Addams Family, such a modern family when you think of it. We’re a family that embraces idiosyncrasies and outcast traits, and we encourage them, we don’t try to box them away. But it was wonderful in season two to be able to explore that, for us to be within Wednesday’s world, even though she didn’t want us to be there, but we planted ourselves there within the school grounds, really. And that mother-daughter dynamic (is universal), but it’s (also) something that is unique to Wednesday and Morticia in that there’s such a deep sense of love, but it’s just two personalities that (clash). It was wonderful to have the time in which to play the character arcs that were written for us within the season.
Question: Production design is one of the most important aspects in any series or film, and setting foot in a production inspired by Tim Burton is definitely something to remember. What was it like stepping into season two, and what were some of your favourite details of all of this?
Catherine Zeta-Jones: I feel like, whether it was just because we were around more, but the attention to detail and the elevation of the sets (was incredible). And I remember when we had one scene… a big kind of gala scene where we all kind of get together, and I was waiting to shoot and I just turned and looked at the detail on the wall and the parquet on the floor, and then this kind of Gothic edginess to it. It was really quite spectacular. I don’t want to give too much away, but there’s a camping episode… let me tell you something, my kids and my husband were like, “Come on, we’ll get a trailer, we’ll go camping,” and I’m like, “Forget it!”
Luis Guzman: Yeah, I tell you what, when people see that camping episode, everybody and their mother are going to want an Addams tent. (laughs)
Miles Millar: But all of it was bigger this season in terms of actually building the sets, that’s the thing. This season, we really… like the camping episode, we built the entire camp. I mean, the 30-foot tower and everything was built from scratch. We built the link, which is the outdoor courtyard at Nevermore on the back lot in Ireland, so it was just, for us, it’s about the physical sets rather than CG enhancements — it’s really the physical, tactile element which we always thought that Tim’s movies had and was something we wanted to replicate in the show.
Jenna Ortega: It was just absolutely beautiful. I mean, we had the privilege of getting to burn down a majority of the school at the end of the first season, so we got to start almost entirely from scratch. So it was great to see these new beautiful castles covered in moss and cobwebs. And we also changed the location. We were shooting in Ireland instead of Romania. Romania had such beautiful Gothic architecture, but Ireland did as well. And there was a lot of great locations that we got to use that carried very intense histories. And also… I guess it was maybe a different level of trust all around this season from Netflix, so I felt like [our production designer] got to explore a bit more and just had more space to be creative, which was really wonderful.
Question: How did the show’s costumes and makeup and hairstyles influence your involvement in the characters, and was there a particular piece that helped you capture your character’s [personality]?
Joanna Lumley: Hester has the most extraordinary hairstyle, and I think what really captured her for me at once, as soon as I saw it going on a white wig followed by a black wig, and then the white wig somehow going up over the black wig, she turned into something from hell. And it was just wonderful because at the bottom of that I wanted to wear the same kind of shoes that Wednesday wears. So she’s wearing Doc Martin’s clumpy boots under her quite svelte clothing. I just adored that, that weird hairstyle at the top and the clumpy boots at the bottom. Because we’re inhabiting creations. These aren’t real people. These are figments of imagination. They started long ago in American history, and we’ve got to bring a kind of faithfulness to them, that these are real people, these are rounded people, and you’ve got to, therefore, spin your character up out of something like making candy floss, as we call it in England.
Tim Burton: But it was so fun to see that this all this stuff come to life, because, like Joanna was saying, they’re larger-than-life characters but inside it’s like families. I don’t know one family that’s not weird, do you know what I mean? It’s like, my whole life, everybody. So these people [are] very symbolic of what you feel about most normal families.
Question: Alan and Miles, after such a massive success with the first season, there’s always a risk of sticking too closely to a formula. From your perspective, what felt new or different about season two, either in the tone of the show or how the characters developed for you?
Alfred Gough: Well, it’s a very good point and it’s something we talked about a lot. And I think for us, we didn’t want to rest on our laurels — we really wanted to push everything forward and really explore this world more, explore the character dynamics more so that you got a sense that there is a bigger world than, you know, even in season one.
Miles Millar: Yeah, I think it’s always that you don’t want it to rest on your laurels, you really want to up the ante in terms of what you’re going to do. And no one’s expectations were higher than our own for season two because the “sophomore slump” is pretty famous. So we were very focused about making sure that this was even better than season one in terms of the scale, but also the character dynamics. And also, I think increasing the ensemble helped as well. So you see more characters, and people that [viewers] wanted to see more of in season one they see a lot more of in season two, such as the Addams family — bringing them to school. So these sort of things, I think, make it feel different and new.
Question: Is it difficult keeping the line and the tone between adult-friendly horror and horror that’s for younger audiences? And how scary can you get for the latter?
Tim Burton: No, I mean, I’ve always been, like, sort of confused by things when people say it’s too light or too dark. Kids will like it that Nightmare Before Christmas is too scary, but for little children, you know, it’s like a fable or fairy tales, you know? Those kind of things remain with people because they incorporate light and dark and humour and drama and scariness. And so, for me… I never think too much about it, because that’s what life is, it’s a mixture of all those things together. And when you have these amazing people [working on the show], it becomes its own thing. And so I don’t think it’s something I really worry about. I feel like it’s [just a] real-life mixture of things.
