Jenna Ortega (00:01): The chaos so far has been induced by other people. I would love however the third season ends, for it to be something that Wednesday gets to do. I think I just want more chaos.

Caitlin Reilly (00:17): Hello, I'm Caitlin Reilly and we have made it to the final episode of the Wednesday Season Two Official Woecast. I know, tragic. To break it all down, I've got three incredibly special guests. First, Owen Painter, Isaac Night, our Undead king. Then we will be joined by Morticia Addams herself, the stunning Catherine Zeta-Jones. And our final guest of the season, Jenna Ortega is back. My guest has gone through quite the transformation from murderous zombie to murderous human, it's Owen Painter. Owen, thank you for being here today.

Owen Painter (01:08): Great to be here.

Caitlin Reilly (01:09): Now you have quite a task this season. You start out as basically a pet zombie and then you turn out to be an evil genius. Now, did the show creators share that plot twist with you going into the season? Was that a part of your knowledge with the audition process? What was going on there?

Owen Painter (01:26): They shared it with me before we started filming. There was a good amount of time where I didn't know what I was going to be up to in between getting the part and starting up. I found out that the character name was Slurp or something like that, and I spent two months after that wondering what Slurp was.

Caitlin Reilly (01:45): Oh my gosh, like where is this going? Who am I going to be?

Owen Painter (01:50): Just walking around my apartment just-

Caitlin Reilly (01:53): Trying to embody Slurp.

Owen Painter (01:54): ... imagining being wet or something. But yeah, we had a meeting, God, it must've been my first week in town or something where they laid it out for me and they told me that I couldn't tell anybody, and so I was keeping that secret for a while.

Speaker (02:11): I swear, if even one of my bees is missing, I'm telling when...

Pugsley Addams (02:22): Down, boy.

Speaker 4 (02:28): What is that?

Pugsley Addams (02:30): The coolest thing ever. Now we have a pet and a best friend.

Caitlin Reilly (02:34): Slurp goes through a reverse decomposition process. You kind of start out as this disgusting, decomposed zombie and then you fully regenerate into a human mad genius. What was the prosthetic and makeup process like?

Owen Painter (02:49): Long.

Caitlin Reilly (02:51): Long, I bet. How many hours are we talking?

Owen Painter (02:54): Oh man. In the beginning, I think we had a couple days where it was like 10 hours or something before-

Caitlin Reilly (03:00): In the chair?

Owen Painter (03:01): ... we started filming. Yeah.

Caitlin Reilly (03:02): Wow.

Owen Painter (03:03): And then costume would be coming in, they're throwing dirt on you and liquid cement is going on your shoes and stuff. But it was also exciting. There were all these different stages, so it ended up, we were troubleshooting the whole time, just figuring out new ways to do it because there would always be little things we could improve or give me a little more visibility in one eye or something. In the beginning days, there was no vision and I couldn't really hear out of it. I handled it better than I thought I would. I think I became a much more Zen person.

Wednesday Addams (03:41): Cute.

Isaac Night (03:42): Imagine my surprise when I saw my right hand wandering the halls of Willow Hill without me and the Da Vinci is nothing without his right hand.

Caitlin Reilly (03:53): Now one of the biggest reveals is that Thing is actually Isaac's amputated hand, which blew my mind. How did you feel when you found out that twist, and how do you hope the fans will react?

Owen Painter (04:06): I hope we catch them by surprise on that one.

Caitlin Reilly (04:09): It caught me by surprise. I'll tell you right now.

Owen Painter (04:11):We worked pretty hard on making sure that was a visible part of the performance throughout without leading the witness too much on it.

Caitlin Reilly (04:20): Right, yeah. I was going to ask because there's a part in the reveal where "thing" is attached to you. It's your hands, but you're having your performance, but thing is having his performance-

Owen Painter (04:31): Yeah. I remember I worked on it for a really long time. I would be like, when I would make coffee in the morning, like crawling or whatever, and then I think I showed up on the first day we were doing it and Victor who plays Thing was just immediate, like, "No, that's not how you do it."

Caitlin Reilly (04:50): No way.

Owen Painter (04:53): And it was a lot more specific than I had anticipated.

Caitlin Reilly (04:56): That's fascinating.

Owen Painter (04:56): That guy knows what he is doing.

Isaac Night (04:59): Now I am complete. The Addams family ends tonight starting with you.

Caitlin Reilly (05:17): So when Isaac and Thing reunite, Isaac gets his sort of Da Vinci powers back. How did you go into playing that physicality?

Owen Painter (05:26): God, the day where we shot that with the rebuilding the lab and everything, that was one of my biggest kid in a candy shop moments.

Caitlin Reilly (05:36): I bet. So many different elements.

Owen Painter (05:38): Yeah. And the scale of it is so gigantic. They had set it up so that the whole room was on tracks and it was all practical. You show up to set and then every time you move your hand there's somebody sliding the entire room-

Caitlin Reilly (05:57): That is so cool. I love that.

Owen Painter (05:57): ... where you pointed, and yeah, so that kind of became, it was like a dance or something.

Isaac Night (06:09): It's all still here.

Speaker 7 (06:11): Good. How are we going to put this junk back together?

Isaac Night (06:17): We are not. I am.

Caitlin Reilly (06:22): So this whole season culminates in this big showdown, the Adam's family, Isaac, François, Tyler, so much going on, so many people. What was it like filming that? That must have been crazy.

Owen Painter (06:36): Yeah, we spent weeks on that thing, just doing little increments each day.

Caitlin Reilly (06:42): Oh wow.

Owen Painter (06:43): And then we'd circle back on things, I think because Tim's... Tim edits as he goes. So I think we would realize what chunks were missing, what things we needed. We had one day with the fight sequence, to practice that I was walking around Dublin, punching myself in the face.

Caitlin Reilly (07:01): Shut up.

Owen Painter (07:02): I didn't even know... I was just kind of neurotically running through the scene or something, and then I noticed I was walking around being like, "Oh," and then these people right behind me were really concerned.

Caitlin Reilly (07:20): No way.

Owen Painter (07:20): They're like, this poor guy.

Caitlin Reilly (07:20): Were you really going for it?

Owen Painter (07:22): Yeah, I was giving myself some real ones.

Caitlin Reilly (07:26): Oh my God. That's commendable. There's certain scenes that obviously take a long time to film. Was it tough to spend so many weeks on that where you kind of do it for a day, you come back and you sort of get lost in the sauce? Or do you feel super tapped into it the whole time?

Owen Painter (07:44): I think in terms of my experience, it's all fun. The worry is of course that it's going to seem like it was shot on different days. So you're trying to get back into these spaces, but a lot of it was technical experimentation. So one day I showed up and they just handed me the camera out of nowhere, and it was on this little GoPro-style rig and they basically just said, "Oh, you're going to beat yourself up with this today."

Caitlin Reilly (08:20): Was the GoPro on your hand?

Owen Painter (08:22):

It's like, you're holding it like a mallet and then you're trying not to break the tens of thousands of dollars of equipment when you hit yourself, but you're trying to sell the punch.

Caitlin Reilly (08:33): The fact that you're hitting yourself.

Owen Painter (08:35): So you're just floundering in front of everybody going, "Oh, oh."

Caitlin Reilly (08:39): That must've been really embarrassing for you on set. Were you embarrassed?

Owen Painter (08:45): When am I not?

Morticia Addams (08:47): Thing, we know you're still in there.

Speaker (08:50): Come back to us, Thing, we love you.

Speaker (08:53): We're your family.

Isaac Night (08:55): This was never part of your family. It's a part of me.

Caitlin Reilly (09:02): Now one of my favorite character actresses in the world, Frances O'Connor. She plays your sister. I wanted to know what it was like working with her.

Owen Painter (09:10): Yeah, it was incredible. I spent a good portion of the beginning of the shoot, kind of walking around by myself in prosthetics and feeling like a diving bell on the butterfly jar or something, seeing through tubes.

Caitlin Reilly (09:27): Yes.

Owen Painter (09:27): Then halfway through, Frances came in. We had a scene together and it just lit up the character for me.

Caitlin Reilly (09:35): Oh really?

Owen Painter (09:36): I just felt the second we started doing things together such a sense of discovery and fun too. She's just a hoot on set.

Caitlin Reilly (09:49): She's amazing.

Owen Painter (09:51): She's all he has and I think when you put that kind of pressure on a relationship in your life, it can take a lot of forms that maybe aren't appropriate. So there's in a way, she's his mother, then sister, best buddy, all of these things that-

Caitlin Reilly (10:13): He needs therapy.

Owen Painter (10:13): Yeah.

Caitlin Reilly (10:14): He needs therapy and maybe a good night out with the girls.

Owen Painter (10:17): I know. I would love to see that in Season Three.

Caitlin Reilly (10:22): I would too, I would definitely as well.

Owen Painter (10:23): Go to Nashville, ride one of the bikes.

Caitlin Reilly (10:23): Isaac's day out. Yeah, a little tricycle.

Owen Painter (10:26): He deserves it.

Caitlin Reilly (10:27): Yeah, he deserves it.

Owen Painter (10:28): Tightly wound.

Caitlin Reilly (10:29): Yeah. Owen, thank you so much for speaking with me.

Owen Painter (10:33): Thank you. My pleasure.

Caitlin Reilly (10:33): And thank you so much for being here.

(10:38): Okay, so I've been practicing my Raven powers every day and I think I have managed to get this crystal ball thing to work. So what I'm going to attempt to do is go back in time and visit Catherine Zeta-Jones in London.

Catherine Zeta-Jones (11:04): Is the crystal ball on? It is? Okay, great.

Morticia Addams (11:10): Be careful, dear. Control is often an illusion, like I let your father believe he's in charge of this family.

Catherine Zeta-Jones (11:19): When they asked me to do Season Two and told me that they really wanted to bring in the family more into the deeper storyline, it just lifted beautifully off the page. Alan Miles and Tim and all the creative team just really made the most beautiful character arc for me as Wednesday, and with my husband, Gomez, I get to have such great work with Jenna, and then of course with Joanna Lumley who plays my mother. So you see these three generations of strong outcast women. I was just thrilled with the way they wove that for me and it's really marvelous in Season Two.

Morticia Addams (11:59): I hear your Uncle Fester's in Willow Hill. We both know he only gets caught when he wants to. What ill-advised mission is he doing for you?

Wednesday Addams (12:10): He's helping me find the truth. I won't allow Enid to die because of me. I know what I saw in that vision.

Morticia Addams (12:17): A torrent of birds around her gravestone. The same torrent that attacked you both today. Not to mention poor Thing, you need to stop, Wednesday, or you're going to make everything worse. Much worse.

Catherine Zeta-Jones (12:33): Morticia, as a mother, puts up with so much with Wednesday because as the matriarch of the Addams family, she embraces the idiosyncrasies of her children. That's what makes them special. That's what makes the whole family special. So it's a little different in that sense, but as an actor-to-actor working with Jenna, it was wonderful to, not only take these characters on a verbal level, but then take it to a physical level and do the duel, the physical fight of our characters. It was just magic.

Wednesday Addams (13:08): Whoever pierces the other's glass heart first wins. If I win, you return Goodie's book.

Morticia Addams (13:16): And if I win, I will burn it. Are you sure you want to do this?

Catherine Zeta-Jones (13:28): Once you saw the relationship between Wednesday and my character, Morticia, talk about how history repeats itself maybe, in that my relationship with my mother, Grandmama Frump, is equally as contentious. She's just a different fish in my world. She is an outcast. She does have special powers. So it's a very strange dynamic, somehow it finds its way into Wednesday and my mother pitting against me.

Hester Frump (14:01): I sent your father and Lurch out to join the search parties.

Wednesday Addams (14:05): They won't find Pugsley. Isaac's too smart.

Hester Frump (14:07): You need to work together and to pool your psychic abilities to locate him.

Wednesday Addams (14:12): Well, my mother is a dove who's blind to malevolence and my psychic ability is currently on an unauthorized leave of absence.

Hester Frump (14:18): That's why you must turn to the other Raven in your family.

Morticia Addams (14:22): My mother.

Hester Frump (14:23): These are desperate times.

Catherine Zeta-Jones (14:28): When I got the chance to work more with Gwendoline, she comes into Wednesday's and my world so deliciously, sarcastically, pointedly. We were childhood rivals. She was jealous of me as a child and now as grownups, I thought she was gone, gone, gone. But she somehow comes back into my life. And it's interesting how we play it of, when you're contentious and you have a hard relationship while people are living, when they're gone somehow, all those things that made you mad don't seem to make you so mad in life, and you wish you had the chance to say that or I wish you could have said, "I forgive you for that," or, "Please forgive me for this." Anyway, she's back.

(15:23): So I get that chance. Morticia gets that chance to kind of like humbly apologize for maybe being a little bit over the top with her. She had to come back.

Morticia Addams (15:38): What has Wednesday done now?

Larissa Weems (15:40): It's not her this time. Your mother is using your estrangement to pull Wednesday closer to her. I envied so much of your life, Morticia, but not your relationship with the old bat.

Morticia Addams (15:55): Oh, thank you for saying so.

Larissa Weems (15:57): Don't thank me yet. You're more like your mother than you think. I'm talking about your pathological predilection for secrets.

Morticia Addams (16:05): Larissa, that's completely unfair.

Larissa Weems (16:08): Is it? You have failed to be forthcoming with Wednesday about your true relationship with Francoise and Isaac.

Catherine Zeta-Jones (16:18): I'm going to be really frank, I am so incredibly honored to be part of Wednesday, forever indebted to Netflix for having me, Tim Burton, Miles and Alan, of course Jenna. And anything that Morticia does in season three is an absolute bonus. The more I get into Morticia's dress and shoes and her character, the more I completely love her. And I quite frankly don't want to let her go. I adore playing her.

Morticia Addams (16:51): Doves and ravens together ignite with wings of darkness and piercing eyes, guide us to truth through night and morn’. To this let our powers be sworn.

Hester Frump (17:04): I didn't drive all this way to hold hands in the dark. How long do we have to keep this up?

Morticia Addams (17:07): My momma, for once just be quiet. We're trying to find Pugsley.

Caitlin Reilly (17:11): Okay, what is that? What?

Caitlin Reilly (17:30): Thing, are you drinking again? We got to talk about this. This is a problem. Thing, it's a problem. Maybe at least clean up after yourself.

Caitlin Reilly (17:48): Joining me once again is the Raven of Nevermore herself, Ms. Jenna Ortega. How are you?

Jenna Ortega (17:54): I'm good. How are you?

Caitlin Reilly (17:55): Amazing. I'm amazing. It's good to see you again. So the ending, so many twists, so many reveals, so many turns. What was your reaction when you first read this in the script?

Jenna Ortega (18:07): Oh, I was so excited. I mean, seven and eight are both really big episodes, but eight is... It's kind of like a two-hander finale, but eight is kind of where the meteor stories happen with Slurp or Isaac, and Hunter's back and Pugsley is in danger and this time I don't want him to die. So there was kind of some complicated things for the family, which is nice, and I love whenever the entire family can get together. So I think it was just a... Everything about it was very satisfying. And that clock tower that we're in in the finale is so graphic and perfectly Tim. It felt like Tim was having so much fun shooting, and the way that he talked about it, it was just all very static and cool and almost comic book-like, which I really enjoyed and it was nice to see him kind of thrive in that set.

Caitlin Reilly (18:56): Yeah, that must have been so wild to film. I heard it took a few weeks or something like that?

Jenna Ortega (19:01): Yeah, it was a few weeks.

Caitlin Reilly (19:02): Very complicated.

Jenna Ortega (19:03): People are covered in soot and we had pyro guys working on it the entire time because it's falling apart. So I swing an axe at something and there's sparks everywhere. There's sparks flying in the back. There was a ton of lighting cues. I really remember having a ball shooting the scene where I'm getting buried in the ground by Isaac because I was up in the air and I had to contort my body in a way. I was flat like a pancake, and then I slowly had to drop my legs and arms at the same time so it looked like I was coming down seamlessly, but I couldn't go high enough because of some sort of safety issue, and then the camera could still see me. So it was just very awkward, but I just remember having so much fun just being hung up in the air all day.

Caitlin Reilly (19:46): Oh, that's uncomfortable on your back.

Jenna Ortega (19:48): No, I kind of liked it. I kind of liked it. And then you're not supposed to, but in between takes, I got to just sit on the crane and the key grip, Doc just pulled it up and let me hang out there, which was really cool. And then also I love it when Tim gets to be interactive. So when I was buried in the ground, he did all the sticks and dirt himself.

Caitlin Reilly (20:06): Oh my God.

Jenna Ortega (20:07): He just came over with the bag and the twigs and was like, "Okay, close your eyes and don't breathe" and just covered me, which was really, really fun. And you could tell he was enjoying it too. We maybe did that for a little too long, but all the twigs around my face were perfectly placed.

Isaac Night (20:24): Because of you, I lost the only person I ever truly loved.

Speaker 9 (20:30): Isaac, it's over. Let my daughter go.

Isaac Night (20:35): Sorry, old friend. Now you two will know what real pain feels like. One more step and I snap her neck.

Caitlin Reilly (20:49):  Owen Painter, who is sort of the big bad villain this season, he is such an incredible new character. What was it like working with him?

Jenna Ortega (20:56): It was great working with Owen. Poor guy was weighed down by those prosthetics-

Caitlin Reilly (21:01): Oh yeah.

Jenna Ortega (21:02): A majority of the season, I don't think he could see, I think he could barely breathe and it's hard to not really have dialogue and pretend like you're eating people that again, you cannot see. You are being walked down a hallway by two people holding each arm, making sure that the walkway is clear so you don't trip and fall and mess up your makeup. So he was just a trooper. He never once complained. He was super easy about it, just absolutely professional. And I actually didn't really get to shoot anything with him until the last two episodes, so that was very fun. I like his character because he's smarter than Wednesday, so it's the first time that Wednesday really is at a loss because she underestimated him and wasn't thinking as quick as she should have. It was just really fun to be able to do a scene with somebody else who's really smart, because oftentimes Wednesday just makes everyone feel stupid around her. Owen just fit right in.

Caitlin Reilly (21:50): We see Weems.

Jenna Ortega (21:52): Yes.

Caitlin Reilly (21:53): Weems, who's Wednesday's current spirit guide, and beautifully portrayed by Gwendoline Christie. She's now on a sabbatical. Is she going to return?

Jenna Ortega (22:05): I want Gwendoline always.

Caitlin Reilly (22:07): Me too.

Jenna Ortega (22:09): I don't think... Yeah, I think everyone does.

Caitlin Reilly (22:11): At all times. Yeah.

Jenna Ortega (22:12): So I was very excited and I think that was one of the first things I said when we were talking about the second season is, "So how are we going to get Gwendoline Christie back because we need her and she makes the show better." Their dynamic is probably my favorite. It's that love/hate for each other, two strong women and it was just sweet to have that dynamic back. Also, she's been replaced by Steve Buscemi in this season, Principal Dort who just plays a total idiot.

Caitlin Reilly (22:40): Love him.

Jenna Ortega (22:40): So her reaction towards him and the difference between the two is just so funny to me. It's so funny. So I love to see the way that she kind of leaned into hating him and trying to take her old desk back. But more than anything, I love working with Gwendoline and I would do anything to work with her again. So I would love for her to come all the time.

Larissa Weems (23:01): It's gratifying to see you two together. Restoring your familial bond was the first big step in regaining your psychic ability. Now that has happened, I'm taking a well-deserved sabbatical. Who ever thought that the person to keep my spirit alive will be you. Until we meet again, Wednesday.

Caitlin Reilly (23:43): Now is there anything you can tease or tell us about what the future holds for Ms. Wednesday Addams?

Jenna Ortega (23:47): I have no idea what's in store for Wednesday, but I really want her to be able to... I kind of find that the chaos so far has been induced by other people. The first season it was the ghost, Pilgrim, super casual, Joseph Crackstone, and then this season was kind of the knights blowing the tower up for the second time. So I would love for however the third season ends, for it to be something that Wednesday gets to do. I think I just want more chaos.

Caitlin Reilly (24:20): Well thank you so much, Jenna, for speaking with me.

Jenna Ortega (24:22): Thank you.

Caitlin Reilly (24:23): This was a delight and it was a terror in all the best ways.

Jenna Ortega (24:27): Oh, that's cute.

Caitlin Reilly (24:28): Isn't that cute?

Jenna Ortega (24:29): Yeah, well done.

Caitlin Reilly (24:31): Do you see what I did there?

Jenna Ortega (24:33): Yeah, I did.

Caitlin Reilly (24:33): Did you like it?

Jenna Ortega (24:33): Kind of.

Caitlin Reilly (24:34): Thank you.

Jenna Ortega (24:34): Of course.

Caitlin Reilly (24:39): All right. Wow. What a ride. We had murderous hides, a reanimated zombie villain, a werewolf/Gorgon love triangle, and a Venetian ball. What more could a girl ask for? Honestly, this season of Wednesday had everything, and I have a feeling that our girl's just getting started.

Wednesday Addams (25:01): Go.

Caitlin Reilly (25:04): And one final time, thank you so much for joining me on the Wednesday Season Two Official Woecast. Oh, hello? Hello? Guys, I'm still in here. Hello? Guys, I really don't like the dark. I'm about to flip out. Hello? Hello?

(25:38): Thank you for joining me over the last eight episodes of the Wednesday Season Two Official Woecast. It's been terrifying. I'm your host, Caitlin Reilly, and this has been a Listen Production for Netflix Podcasts, from Listen, the executive producer is Zoe Edwards and the senior producer is Aidan Seymour Judd. With production from Danielle Jones-Wesley, Tom Koenig and Flynn Radam.

(26:07): The production manager is Sarah Sharp and the chief content officer is Darby Doris. From Netflix, the executive producers are Robert Summer and David Markowitz, with production from Katherine Hughes, Erica Brady, Erin Schmalfeld, Keely Flaherty, and Anna Paige Nadin. You can catch all episodes of this series on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Tudum, or anywhere else you can dig up podcasts. And don't forget to head to Tudum.com for so many more behind the scenes deep dives of Wednesday Season Two.