Creepy? Check. Kooky? Definitely. Mysterious? Very. Spooky? You bet. Wednesday on Netflix has taken the streaming world by storm, showing the Addams Family that everyone already knows and loves is afraid of through an even darker lens. Jenna Ortega shines as the lead, bringing the sarcastic character to life with her unblinking eyes, gothic style, and unimpressed attitude. It’s no wonder the 20-year-old star was nominated for a Golden Globe for her incredible work.
Add in Tim Burton as director, a cast including Catherine Zeta-Jones, Game of Thrones actress Gwendoline Christie, and the original Wednesday Addams, Christina Ricci, and the result is pure television magic. We’ve uncovered the real stories behind how a magician was cast as Thing, that viral dance scene, and why Jenna Ortega showed up to her audition with Tim Burton covered in fake blood. So, if you dare, go behind the gates of Nevermore Academy with this list of little-known trivia.
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It’s one of the most streamed Netflix shows of all time.
Fans watched over 1 billion hours of Wednesday in just one month, shattering records and making it the second most successful English-language program in Netflix history.
The series was shot in Romania.
Filming here allowed production to capture that gothic feel and towering architecture. The exterior of Nevermore Academy is the Cantacuzino Castle, and other filming locations include historic landmarks like Palatul Monteoru and Casa Niculescu-Dorobantu, the Bucharest Botanical Garden, and the famous Gara Regala train station.
It was Tim Burton’s third attempt at an ‘Addams Family’ project.
The famed director was originally approached to lead 1991’s The Addams Family, but he had to turn it down because of his work on Batman Returns. Nearly two decades later, he signed on to co-produce and co-write a stop-motion animated film that didn’t pan out.
Jenna Ortega showed up to her audition covered in fake blood.
While filming the horror movie X, the actress took a call with Tim Burton to discuss Wednesday. “I had stage blood and glycerin sweat in my hair and a massive cut on my face and had been up for over 24 hours,” she told WIRED. “I got on Zoom and [Tim] actually laughed. It made me laugh. I thought it was endearing.”
She choreographed that viral dance scene herself.
Ortega unknowingly had COVID-19 while filming the dance.
Wednesday production came under fire after Ortega revealed she was instructed to film while feeling sick. “They were giving me medicine between takes because we were waiting on the positive result,” she told NME. Once her COVID-19 test came back positive, MGM removed her from the set.
Tim Burton decided Wednesday shouldn’t blink.
The actress and director aligned on this early on. “I would have to restart a take if I started [blinking], because sometimes you start crying,” she told TODAY. “[It was] Romanian winter, there was all this wind in my face. I learned to blink on other people’s lines.”
Burton wanted Thing to be played by a real person.
“The first phone call I had with Tim, he wanted Thing to be derived from an actor, a performer,” VFX supervisor Tom Turnbull told Netflix. Victor Dorobantu, a magician, wore a full-coverage blue suit so that his body could be edited out.
The set was adjusted to fit Victor Dorobantu.
To help the actor playing Thing get into sometimes awkward positions, customization had to happen. “Suddenly we’re into this world, very similar to designing sets for The Muppets, where things have to be elevated. You have to have trapdoors, you have to have secret ways of getting the actor in,” production designer Mark Scruton told Gold Derby.
The Hyde monster was played by an actor, too.
Daniel Himschoot brought the terrifying Hyde to life on set. In a behind-the-scenes photo shared by Netflix, the stunt performer is seen wearing both stilts and crutches to mimic the monster’s bone-chilling movements.
Christina Ricci almost wasn’t in the show.
It’s hard to imagine anyone else playing Nevermore’s “normie” teacher. But when filming first began, actress Thora Birch (aka Dani from Hocus Pocus!) was cast as a similar character, Tamara Novak. When she dropped out seemingly due to creative differences, Burton created the role of Marilyn Thornhill for Ricci. She even had to reshoot some of Birch’s scenes using a green screen.
Ricci and Jenna Ortega never compared character notes.
Ortega told MTV News she thinks Ricci, who played Wednesday Addams in 1991, didn’t want to seem “overbearing” by making suggestions. On the flip side, Ortega was nervous about copying her predecessor’s performance too much. The result? The pair kept all talk of the character off-limits. “I think when she was on set, neither one of us said Wednesday once to each other,” Ortega said.
There are nods to the original ‘Addams Family.’
Enid and Wednesday’s dorm is called Ophelia Hall, named after Morticia’s sister in the original TV series, and Principal Larissa Weems is named after “Miss Weems,” the family babysitter from the same show. Tyler says, “You rang?” in a scene—an obvious reference to Lurch’s memorable line. And the Nightshades code is a double snap, perhaps the most obvious Easter egg of them all.
Jenna Ortega cut bangs for the role.
The actress took a big risk—but luckily, it paid off. “We tried silver streaks in my hair. Short, tiny braids. Really long, thick braids,” she told Teen Vogue. “I told the hairdresser … ‘Hey, maybe just cut my actual hair.’ He said, ‘Are you sure?’ And I said, ‘Hey, if we have time to grow it out, we have time to grow it out. Let’s just see.’ And then [Tim Burton] loved it.”
She also learned to play the cello.
“I started working on the cello about two months before we started shooting,” the star told WIRED. “I probably couldn’t play too well now just because I’ve been away from home so much working.” But Jenna’s cello journey is not over yet. “It is something I want to continue to pursue.”
And she learned how to fence.
Emma Myers also had to perfect a special skill.
To understand her character Enid Sinclair better, the actress attended a “werewolf bootcamp,” she told Seventeen. “Me and a couple other guys crawling around on the floor growling at each other? That was weird. I’ll never forget that.”
The wardrobe department hand-painted Wednesday’s uniform.
“I wanted a gray and black stripe, but I didn’t really like how they looked in the world,” Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood told Variety. “So I ended up having the stripes drawn and painted.” They then silkscreened the stripes, resulting in a softer look on her costume.
Principal Weems’s outfits were inspired by a Hitchcock film.
“I bought [a] vintage poster of Tippi Hedren in The Birds. I showed [Gwendoline Christie] a picture of it. I said, ‘This is who I think you are.’ And she was like, ‘I love it,'” Colleen Atwood told Variety. “[Principal Weems] is her own kind of misfit, in a totally different way.”
Catherine Zeta-Jones spent the longest time in hair and makeup.
“We worked together to create this [modern] Morticia,” head makeup and hair designer Tara McDonald told BuzzFeed. From her hair extensions (Zeta-Jones brought some of her own to use!) to covering her body in pale foundation, the transformation took about two and a half hours.
Luis Guzmán is the oldest Gomez Addams to date.
The actor took on the legendary role at 66 years old, making him the oldest Gomez in Addams Family history. Bonus fun fact: At 53, Catherine Zeta-Jones is also the oldest Morticia.
The blood shower scene took multiple takes.
The Poe Cup canoe scenes were filmed in two separate lakes.
Both the Brănești and Sterbei lakes were used and the cast had to learn how to row for filming. “We’d have to race against each other, and it was pretty grueling. You don’t realize that racing canoes for an hour is quite the job,” Joy Sunday told Teen Vogue.
The Weathervane Cafe has a hidden Tim Burton tribute.
Percy Hynes White was the cast’s biggest prankster.
The actor who played Xavier Thorpe’s most memorable gag? He stole a golf cart from set. He and Georgie Farmer (Ajax) “got in trouble” after being chased down the street by crew members.
Goody Addams’s name may not be Goody after all.
While Wednesday calls her ancestor “Goody” after meeting her in a vision, in Pilgrim society—the time period she’s from—”Goody” was used as a prefix for women, similar to “Miss” or “Mrs.”
Hunter Doohan had to take a driving test for one scene.
In a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, Tyler drives away from Nevermore Academy after Wednesday tricks him and Enid into exploring the Gates Mansion with her. “They don’t like actors [driving]. I had to drive two feet. I had to take a test to make sure I could handle that,” the actor told Seventeen.
George Burcea is the shortest Lurch in ‘Addams Family’ history.
Speaking of Lurch, there’s a creepy fan theory about his eyes.
Eagle-eyed viewers noticed that the character has one glassy blue eye in the first episode that disappears by the season finale. Fans on TikTok think the Lurch in the final episode might not be Lurch at all. Some are convinced it’s a shapeshifter driving Wednesday away from Nevermore Academy, throwing out names like Rowan, Marilyn Thornhill, and Principal Weems as suspects—or even a mystery character we haven’t met yet.
Joy Sunday was freaked out by her bright contact lenses at first.
“Looking in the mirror versus seeing myself on screen is a little crazy,” she told Teen Vogue. “It would be funny, meeting somebody for the first time on set, and they’d be like, ‘Why are you looking at me so strange?’ Because of the contacts.” She got used to them, though. So much so that, sometimes, she forgot she had them in, headed home, and had to go back to set to return them.
Fred Armisen really shaved his head to play Uncle Fester.
The actor committed to the role. “It was prosthetics over my eyebrows to give me that look,” the actor told Vanity Fair. “But I think that bald caps don’t look great all the time, so I was hoping to just make it that much more convincing.”
Some cast members became roommates after filming.
The actors had plenty of time to bond while living together in Romania. They often share goofy photos from set, comment on each other’s posts, and gush about working together in interviews. “She’s incredible, I love her to death,” Emma Myers told J-14 of Jenna Ortega. Percy Hynes White (Xavier) and Georgie Farmer (Ajax) even became roommates in Los Angeles after returning home.
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