‘Wednesday’ Season 2: Bosses on Nevermore’s New Staff, Wednesday & Morticia, and Enid’s Fate
Q&A
Wednesday Addams, popular? After saving Nevermore Academy in the first season of Netflix’s Addams Family-based hit, Wednesday, Jenna Ortega‘s prickly title character finds herself in a most unusual predicament: Upon returning to the supernatural boarding school — her first time voluntarily doing so without being expelled or otherwise unwelcome — Wednesday finds herself the star savior of Nevermore. She even has a fan club…and she can’t seem to shake them.
After all, she defeated resurrected pilgrim Joseph Crackstone (William Houston), who was brought back to life by his ancestor Laurel Gates (Christina Ricci), and managed to get her love interest, the not-so-normie Tyler Galpin (Hunter Doohan), who was actually a dangerous shape-shifting Hyde, apprehended and sent to Willow Hill Psychiatric Hospital. So, it’s not totally surprising that in the sophomore season of the breakout hit, the staff and students of Nevermore have officially turned their heads to look at Wednesday. But all that attention? So not her thing.
Adding gas to Wednesday’s popularity fire is spirited new principal Barry Dort (a brilliant Steve Buscemi). But the jaded psychic has bigger problems. Seen in the season trailer, Wednesday has a vision of her cheery werewolf roomie Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers) dying, and she blames Wednesday for it. She doesn’t handle it well. But it does set up a twisty ongoing mystery for Season 2.
Below, showrunners Miles Millar and Al Gough get into what else is ahead for the highly-anticipated sophomore round.
First, Wednesday faces a major problem right at the start of the season with this vision she has of the death of Enid, her first real friend. How will the vision affect their friendship this season?
Al Gough: Well, I think what’s interesting, you know, at the end of Season 1 with the hug is that Wednesday found a friend. But when she comes back to Nevermore, what she doesn’t realize is that people evolve and friendships evolve. And Enid’s evolved. She’s wolfed out; she’s part of a wolf pack. She’s expanding her world. And when Wednesday has that vision, her first reaction isn’t to share it with Enid, or bring her into it. It’s to think, “Only I can protect her.” And by protecting her, Wednesday freezes Enid out. Obviously the bigger plot issue is, “I want to save my friend.” But also, it’s [examining] what does a friendship look like? What’s the give and take of an actual friendship? And I think for us, female friendship has always been at the core of this, especially with Wednesday and Enid being them. So I think it’s fun to watch Wednesday Addams try to navigate that.
Wednesday also discovers that she’s now popular when she gets back to Nevermore, which is just hilarious to see. She even has a fan club, led by Agnes DeMille (Evie Templeton). What is Wednesday’s reaction to her newfound popularity and meeting this fan club?
Miles Millar: It was really, [us asking] what would be the reality of Wednesday returning to school and what would make her deeply uncomfortable? [Laughs] So the idea that she returns thinking everything’s going be fine and like last year, and actually no, it’s changed, because of the events of the finale where she saved the school. So now, she’s this super popular hero figure for the kids. And that is just anathema to her. It’s her living nightmare. At the end of the first episode [viewers see] her reaction to that situation and how she plays it, we thought was very, very Wednesday.
Helen Sloan/Netflix
That’s great. There’s also so many incredible new staff members coming to Nevermore this school year. You have a new principal, played by Steve Buscemi, new head of music Isadora Capri (Doctor Who‘s Billie Piper) and Christopher Lloyd as Professor Orloff. Can you just talk about what it was like to fold in all of these new figures into the Nevermore staff?
Gough: We wanted to expand the school, because last year you really only saw Principal Weems [Gwendoline Christie] and Thornhill [Ricci]. And in terms of the principal, we wanted to bring in someone who was the exact opposite of Weems. Someone who is this kind of rah-rah, pro-normie. And Steve’s just so incredible, he snapped into the world so perfectly from Day 1. It was even his idea to have the wig where the hair kind of looks like Edgar Allan Poe’s [Nevermore Academy’s most famous alumnus] — and Steve’s one of those crazy people where he just looks good in weird wigs. And he was a fan of the show. He’d actually watched the first season, so he came ready to play, which was great.
And for Billie, what’s great about Billie is she literally has outcast energy. She brings this incredibly odd vibe to her role [as Isadora], and it makes her mysterious and compelling, which is so much fun.
And Christopher Lloyd had actually slid into Miles’ DMs, as the kids say.
On Instagram?!
Millar: On Instagram, yes. It was such an honor to get him into the show [Lloyd played Uncle Fester in the 1991 and 1993 Addams Family films]. It was something we always thought about. This is a really fun role for him. So that’s something that we were really excited about, and Chris knocked it out of the park in terms of his performance.
Let’s talk about Willow Hill, and Tyler, who is returning. He’s a character that you could have written off after the end of Season 1, and tons of shows do it all the time, but instead, he’s back and he’s got a relatively big role. We know from the trailer, that he will bust out of Willow Hill eventually. Can you talk about how Tyler’s feeling now that he’s been locked away these past few months and how he’ll reenter Wednesday’s orbit?
Gough: I think what’s good now is, he was basically playing a character up until the very last episode. Now, you see him fully unleashed. But there is a tragic quality to that character. And it’s fun to watch, especially in [the second episode], him and Wednesday go toe-to-toe, and it’s almost The Silence of the Lambs-ish.
They have a very compelling relationship, Wednesday and Tyler. There was a reason that she was attracted to him, even when she didn’t know he was a monster. And the idea that the first boy she was attracted to, turns out to literally be a homicidal monster is very on-brand for Wednesday. So [in Season 2], we’ll see the next iteration of their relationship. And it’s so different this season because all the cards are on the table.
Jonathan Hession/Netflix
Also at Willow Hill, we’ll meet chief psychiatrist Dr. Fairburn (Thandiwe Newton) and her righthand woman Judi (Heather Matarazzo). What was it like to expand the world into Willow Hill more?
Millar: Well, that was pretty exciting, and we found a great location to shoot it. We changed locations from Romania, where we shot the first season, to Ireland. So we wanted to make sure there was a continuity of look. We found this sort of abandoned Catholic seminary in the middle of Dublin, which became the Willow Hill. It’s so institutional and spooky. [As far as the casting,] that’s the power of [executive producer] Tim Burton. When we have Tim involved in a project, we can get incredible actors who just want to be in the show. So that’s something that is just very special. Both Heather and Thandiwe were amazing and they really elevate every scene they’re in.
Now, there’s even more Addamses involved in this season. Wednesday’s brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) is beginning his time at Nevermore too.
Millar: Pugsley is always a character in the previous iterations who’s kind of an afterthought. So we really thought it would be a great thing for the show to highlight him and see him grow up, just as we’ve seen Wednesday grow up, and really explore his personality and what he can bring. The idea of him wanting a pet zombie and getting it, and the chaos that that unleashes onto this world and the complications that ensue, we just felt like it was a really great way to showcase that character.
The relationship between Wednesday and her mom Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is a also big part of Season 2. Adding to that drama, you’ve got her Grandmama (Joanna Lumley) coming in too, which is amazing. Can you talk about what the dynamics between these three generations of women look like?
Gough: The mother-daughter relationship really made an impression, [even though Zeta-Jones] was only in two episodes in the first season. We wanted to expand that and bring the family into the school environment in a way that made sense.
I think what’s interesting about the Addams family is, people love them, but you don’t know much about them. There really isn’t any mythology to them. In the Charles Addams cartoons, they didn’t even have names, and they didn’t get names until the 1960s TV show. And then you have the movies, and then us.
So with the characters, there’s not a lot of story. For us, that meant, for the Addams, they’re a family, they love each other, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t have normal family dynamics that a lot of us have. So you have the mother-daughter relationship, which is, Wednesday’s growing up, and Morticia is trying to let go. For Morticia, it’s almost like being a helicopter parent. [Laughs] She’s very worried about Wednesday. And then we thought, “Oh, what is Morticia’s relationship with her mother?” Wednesday loves her grandmother. And then you’ve got that weird dynamic where grandmother and granddaughter can sometimes gang up on mom. That was a lot of fun for us.
We were joking in the writer’s room, “Wouldn’t it be great to get like a Joanna Lumley-type?” And then we’re like, “Or, we could just ask Joanna Lumley!”
Owen Behan/Netflix
Millar: She’s perfect. And she comes back a lot in the last half, so we see a lot of her. It was great to see those three women together, who are incredibly dysfunctional, but also under the surface love each other. But it is a wild ride for those three.
Wednesday, Season 2, Part 1 Premiere, Wednesday, August 6, Netflix
Wednesday, Season 2, Part 2 Premiere, Wednesday, September 3, Netflix
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