Wednesday’s first season is Netflix’s third biggest show of all time, clocking up a 1,237 million hours of viewing in its first 28 days alone.
Season 2 has the challenge of magicking up similar numbers, but it’ll pack plenty of gothic superpowers to help do it. Psychic student Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) is heading back to Nevermore Academy to get to the bottom of more macabre goings-on in a second run that has Tim Burton back to lend his ooky, spooky touch to things.
This time, Wednesday’s bubbly werewolf roommate Enid (Emma Myers) is under threat from a mysterious force that manifests via a murder of murderous crows. It’s The Birds meets The Breakfast Club, where everyone is Ally Sheedy.
Alongside Ortega, all the Wednesday gang returns to join the black-hued fun, including Catherine Zeta-Jones as overprotective mum Morticia Addams, Luis Guzmán as dilettante dad Gomez and Isaac Ordonez as Wednesday’s eccentric younger brother Pugsley, this time busy rearing a zombie called Slurp. Gwendoline Christie, Christina Ricci and Fred Armisen are all back too. Outcasts assemble!
Where was Wednesday Season 2 filmed?
The sharp-eyed will spot one major change for season 2. Instead of Romania, where the first season was filmed, showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar turned to Ireland for the shadowy forests and gothic castles of the Vermont town of Jericho. ‘Everything about Ireland fits the sensibility of the show: we have incredible woods; we have beautiful castles; we have the lush greens, the gray skies,’ says Millar. ‘There’s something magical about the light that really lends itself to the show.’
Here’s where Wednesday season 2 found its horror Hogwarts on the Emerald Isle.
Nevermore Academy was filmed at Charleville Castle, County Offaly
Season 1 used Romania’s Cantacuzino Castle as its Nevermore Academy. For season 2, the production turned to County Offaly’s gothic Charleville Castle in central Ireland. ‘It tied really well with the location that they used for Nevermore in Romania last year,’ says supervising locations manager Maria O’Connor. One challenge was to match the specific look of the school gates and its surrounding woodland. The locations team found an uncannily similar spot on a private estate in County Wicklow, a hundred or so miles away. ‘There was a tree in the exact same spot where there was a tree in Romania,’ adds O’Connor. ‘It was amazing.’
Newark Airport was recreated at Dublin’s Trinity College
Episode 1 sees a heavily-armed Wednesday heading to the Midwest to tackle notorious serial killer the Kansas City Scalper (Haley Joel Osment), having an awkward encounter with the metal detector at Newark Airport en route. With Dublin Airport too busy to film at, the production recreated the airport in the unlikely surrounds of Trinity Business School. ‘They had a security desk for the business school and we turned that into an airline check-in area,’ explains O’Connor. ‘People coming into work there couldn’t believe how realistic the set was.’
The Kansas City Scalper’s home was filmed in County Wicklow
The Scalper’s house in the Kansas ’burbs is actually a pretty housing estate in the County Wicklow town of Newcastle. Task one was to grub up the street to give it a more down-at-heel vibe. ‘We had to give everyone a shabby paint job and mess up their front gardens,’ says O’Connor. Filming there took place on the first day of production. ‘[The locals] couldn’t believe that Wednesday was coming to their road. All the kids were so excited.’
Camp Jericho and Nevermore Cemetery were built at Powerscourt House
Another key season 2 location is Powerscourt House, a much-visited 18th century estate famous for its beautiful gardens, spectacular waterfall, and the imposing redwoods of its surrounding forests. In episode 3 Nevermore’s pupils head to Camp Jericho to cross swords with a posse of cadets, scenes that were filmed at Powerscourt and showcase Powerscourt Waterfall, the second highest in Ireland.
Powerscourt is proud of its long film history, with classics like Laurence Olivier’s Henry V and Excalibur, and more recent movies like Little Women (2017), Cocaine Bear and The Green Knight all shooting on its grounds.
Slurp’s shed was built at Clermont House, Rathnew
While Wednesday is off on the hunt for the mysterious threat to her friend, her brother Pugsley is busy rearing a brain-munching zombie in a shack on the ground of Nevermore. Clermont House, an 18th century Palladian country house that was once a school itself, was used for the Slurp set, as well as a hospital set and for a sheriff’s press conference scene.
Morticia’s new home was built in miniature in Cloragh Woods
The deliciously twisted interior of Morticia’s home, Rotwood Cottage, was built at Ashford Studios, but a trick of perspective lends season 2 its exterior shots of the gothic cabin. ‘We ended up putting a miniature in a forest,’ explains O’Connor.
Willow Hill Psychiatric Facility was filmed at Clonliffe College, Dublin
A key location in the second series is Willow Hill, a psychiatric facility where Tyler Galpin (Hunter Doohan) is incarcerated. ‘We took over Clonliffe College, which was an old priest training college in Drumcondra, for about three months,’ says O’Connor. ‘Its scale and big gothic corridors worked really well with where they’d shot in the first season.’
County Wicklow’s Ashford Studios provides the interiors
Not all of Wednesday’s intricate sets and ornate backdrops could be filmed on location, of course, Enter Ireland’s state-of-the-art Ashford Studios to offer four sound stages and expansive backlots that filled the gap. Nevermore Academy’s Founders Pyre, in which Wednesday scrambles through a bonfire in search of a prized tome, was built at the studios, as was Jericho’s big Pilgrim World set, the interiors of Willow Hill and Rotwood Cottage, and Professor Orloff’s (Christopher Lloyd) lab.
Is there a trailer?
There is – watch it below.
Here’s how to visit the Romanian castle behind season 1’s Nevermore Academy.
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