Today must be Wednesday, because we’re getting important updates on the highly anticipated Netflix series starring Jenna Ortega. With just a couple of weeks until the show premieres, the streamer decided to hype us up with a behind the scenes video that takes us on a tour of the main set piece of the story: Nevermore Academy, the school to which Wednesday Adams (Ortega) goes after getting expelled several times.
In the video, series director Tim Burton says that part of the fun in creating the Nevermore boarding school was the chance to come up with a place that welcomes outsiders like Wednesday Addams – which includes vampires, werewolves, sirens, gorgons and others. Showrunners Al Gough and Miles Millar also stressed that gothic architecture was a huge influence on the set design, which features high castles, secret passages and dungeons galore.
The production team also talks about Wednesday’s dorm room, in which there’s a very clear divide that illustrates the title character’s personality clashing with her roommate’s. The video also reveals that the production designers, along with Burton, Gough and Millar, didn’t want to just take the cast and put them in a random castle, but rather have the school mapped out and custom-made in order for it to better translate the feel of the series.
The Addams Family Legacy and Where Wednesday Fits In
Wednesday is based on the internationally famous comic strip by author and illustrator Charles Addams, which later got more popular with the ’90s movie adaptations. The franchise has also been adapted to video games, animated TV series, and an ongoing animated feature film franchise. The Netflix series isn’t a remake or reboot, and is set to explore the Addams daughter’s journey into adulthood, much like the series’ showrunners did with long-running and popular series Smallville. Wednesday will also feature murder-mystery elements.
Aside from Ortega, Wednesday also features Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Addams, Luis Guzmán as Gomez Addams, Fred Armisen as Uncle Fester, Isaac Ordonez as Pugsley Addams, Victor Dorobantu as Thing, and Gwendoline Christie as headmistress Larissa Weems. Christina Ricci, who made the Wednesday character internationally famous, also stars in the series, but not as an older version of Ortega. She plays Marilyn Thornhill, a character which we’ll know more about once the series premieres.
Netflix premieres Wednesday on November 23. You can watch the featurette below:
Check out the official synopsis here:
The series is a sleuthing, supernaturally infused mystery charting Wednesday Addams’ years as a student at Nevermore Academy, where she attempts to master her emerging psychic ability, thwart a monstrous killing spree that has terrorized the local town, and solve the murder mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago — all while navigating her new and very tangled relationships at Nevermore.
