How Mark Scruton Went Beyond the Gothic Details for Nevermore in ‘Wednesday’

When you think of Wednesday or The Addams Family, very specific images pop into your head. The first season of Netflix’s megahit comedy series (nominated for 12 Primetime Emmy Awards) established a specific and unique world that we have never thought about before, and it’s a detailed jumping off point for seasons to come. Production designer Mark Scruton not only created an enviable, fantastical new realm of reality, but his work is so character driven that we can’t help thinking about these characters inhabiting these spaces.

Awards Daily’s Clarence Moye did a fantastic interview with Scruton for phase one about Nevermore’s gothic details, so you should give it a read before checking out some other spaces discussed in this go-around.

While Wednesday is set in the here and now, it has a timeless quality where you might forget that it takes place in present day. Nevermore Academy is a secluded hideaway for students to feel like themselves, and Scruton knew he had to place a beloved character in an entirely new environment and make it plausible to new audiences and hardcore fans alike.

“The pressure was immense, and I had to compartmentalize and put things aside,” Scruton says. “The important thing for me was not getting bogged down by what came before. That would’ve been a fatal mistake. In the end, I didn’t go back and didn’t look at anything–I didn’t have to since I grew up on the TV show. I didn’t go back to that or any reference materials, and I went back to the original material. Jenna [Ortega] was so strong in what she brought to it, so we wanted to create an equally strong framework. To give her a world that was specifically hers and fresh wasn’t betraying the roots of it at all. I went back to the original cartoons and tried to take the essence of it. We could run with it after we found that to stay true to her.”

Yes, Scruton knows how obsessed we all are with the window in Wednesday and Enid’s dorm room. He has even seen how images of the window’s design is in artists’ shops on sites like Etsy and RedBubble.

“I have seen it,” he says, with a laugh. “It’s mental. Regularly, people will send me pictures of their tattoos that they’ve had done of it. It’s extraordinary that the level of creativity that that has sparked is very humbling.”

When Wednesday arrives in her new dorm room, she meets the excitable Enid Sinclair. Enid’s side of the room is an explosion of greens and pinks (there is even a flamingo wearing a tutu), and it serves as a continuous sight gag but also character development. ‘Wednesday is allergic to color,’ Morticia says. Scruton didn’t just want to throw hundreds of items into one side–he had to control it.

“Wednesday’s side is so specific, and everything we got in there was agonized over, painted, and treated,” he says. “Normally, when you are dressing, you have these trestle tables with all the props on it, and you bring them into the space to work through it all. Wednesday’s side had one table, and Enid’s side had about thirty tables going off into the distance with mountains of stuff. We soon realized that if we packed it all in, it would be muddy and too much. It would become noise, so we spent a lot of time putting stuff in and switching things around. When you look at it, it’s actually colorful and not just mush. I thought we could just throw everything in, but when we started to do it we could see what works. We spent more time on Enid’s side to figure out what looked good next to each other. A lot of the cuddly toys we had to make, but you have so many problems with copyright and it’s had to track them down when you need them.”

Principal Weems office is the intersection of style and administration elegance. In addition to the huge desk (with taxidermy crows resting on top), you might notice the dual chandeliers or the ornate, dark wood details around the door frame at the back of the room. What you can’t ignore, however, is the huge, Brutalist fireplace on the side of the room. It’s a fantastic space.

“At one point, it was going to be a very different set, and the fireplace was going to be a big murder of crows coming in a wave. The Gorgon was clearly the strongest image, and we wanted to do something very bold to make a statement whenever anyone walked in. That room is actually massive. It was important to have a strong centerpiece that set off Gwendoline since she is playing such a strong character. There is a jostle between who had seniority in that space whether it was Weems or the fireplace, and nine times out of ten, she won. I wanted that room to be a melting pot of different styles which is the same for the school. I didn’t want the school to be a one-size-fits-all gothic building–we dug into the details a lot. The desk she sits at is a modernist, ’60s piece that we brought in from, I think, Texas.

It has these beautiful gothic insets on a modern piece, and we had brutalist light fixtures. Gwendoline was really into that kind of Brutalist sculpture, so we did an owl for her that sat off to one side. Tim really wanted a unicorn mug to show she had a softer side, but it, like Wednesday’s room, had items specifically chosen. It’s not a clutter of stuff. When you step back, it was a spare space. We found chairs that had great shape to them that accompanied the chairs that we dyed since they had a funny shade to them. We made Gwendoline’s chair to make it look more like more like a Bond villain, ’60s swivel chair. There’s a lot of style in there.”

A space that looks different from everything else in this season is Valerie Kinbott’s office. Bathed in white with wood accents, it’s truly a Nancy Meyers fever dream. Wednesday stands out in a completely different way when she visits Kinbott, and you can see some character building in the artwork on the walls. It’s a space where you lean into every detail. Just think how difficult it would be to get that space clean after The Hyde’s attack…

“You’re the first person to ask me about that space,” Scruton says. “Kinbott’s office was tough, because it did have to be this white oasis. We chose the sunshine-y yellow, so it wasn’t just white. We wanted it to be this overly peppy but clean and clinical. We included the tribal art on the walls to give a sense about her travels but also indicate that she had a darker side. That’s also seen in the taxidermy. That was a tougher set that we imagine, and it originally ended up fussier than we wanted. Tim came in and stripped most of the dressing in the end which, at first, worried me. When we got into it and moved some things around, Tim and I–literally on our own–got to this point where Wednesday was in an oasis of nothing and everything was behind Kinbott. I could see then what Tim was going after, but it was more complicated than I originally though. Like myself, Tim isn’t as comfortable as we’d like to be in bright happy spaces.”

I could not let Scruton go without mentioning a truly Burton-esque piece of furniture. When Wednesday attends Ms. Thornhill’s botany class, there is a massive desk in the middle of the room, and it’s about to be take over by some overgrown foliage. It’s almost as if the desk is about to sprout legs and lumber away. I love how the drawers literally have plants growing out of them.

“That was one of the last things I did when I was dressing it,” Scruton says. “I pulled out the drawers and placed some plants in there. When we were shooting, you have to try to get into character’s heads when you don’t always have the time to get all that information. You have to dig deep in the moment. I wanted that to feel quite overgrown and if you would leave it alone for too long, the ivy would take over. It would go back to nature, so to speak.”

Wednesday is streaming now on Netflix.