Tayyaba
‘Wednesday’, starring Jenna Ortega as the titular character, came out with season 1 in November last year and was an instant hit. This show follows the journey of Wednesday Addams after she is sent to Nevermore Academy which is a school for teenage outcasts with supernatural abilities. It currently holds the position of Netflix’s second most popular English-language show after ‘Stranger Things’. Here’s how production designers created Nevermore Academy:
Was Nevermore Academy created using CGI?
The production designer of ‘Wednesday’ was recently interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter where he revealed the secrets of Nevermore Academy, breaking down exactly how CGI was used to create it. Mark Scruton worked on all eight episodes of the first season, and he told THR that Nevermore’s exterior shots were filmed at Cantacuzino Castle in Romania. Several CGI edits were used in order to give the supernatural boarding school a darker, more Addams Family feel. Scruton added that the central turret was “great” and it gave “it the sort of Addams Family starting point that just gave the nod to that original house” which is why they chose the castle. “It’s really only the existing frontage and then the little bit of the courtyard that’s real, and everything else is added onto and extended,” he added, “which served us very well in the end because it meant we could build our own world.”
“We wanted to give it a silhouette that gave it a sense of familiarity to the Addams Family world… And then when you look at the building itself, it’s actually very different. It’s heavy stone and Gothic and gargoyles. It’s not the sort of Neo-Victorian [style] that Charles Addams drew, but it has the same feel and the same language. So you know you’re in that same world without having it be the same.”
Mark Scruton
What’s next for ‘Wednesday’?
Since ‘Wednesday’ became such a worldwide sensation, a second season was soon announced back in January. No release date has been revealed at this time but speculation suggests Mark Scruton is expected to return as production designer. We do know that Jenna Ortega will have a much larger responsibility this season as she plans to work behind the scenes as a producer as well. Ortega has mentioned that in the new season, the show will focus more on horror and move away from the love triangles we saw in season 1. She confirms that season 2 will have no “romantic love interest for Wednesday.”