The Deeper Meaning Behind Jenna Ortega’s Costumes on Netflix’s “Wednesday”

POPSUGAR: What did you take from The Addams Family in 1991 with Christina Ricci and bring to the character today? Was there a non-negotiable? Something you specifically wanted to change?

Mark Sutherland: With the Christina Ricci character and the new Wednesday, it was really just bringing it into modern times but still keeping that similar vibe that Christina Ricci and Wednesday Addams had before so there’s a connection from the past to the present.

Also, with the fabrics and the prints, [our goal was] just trying to carry them through to the first time we see Wednesday Addams in this series and then moving forward from that – just as an initial transition from the Christina Ricci character to the Jenna [Ortega] character.

PS: Were there certain aspects of the costume you knew screamed Wednesday Addams?

MS: Well definitely, for what we did, it’s the classic black and white print dress with the white collar with the pigtails and [it’s] very conventional in its look. So, initially when you see that first image of her in Nancy Reagan [High School], you know who that is.

And it’s that connection from the Christina [Ricci] Wednesday to the Jenna [Ortega] Wednesday, because you just see that image of her walking down the corridor. So, it’s basically using those similar prints that they used before but bringing it into more of a modern world.

PS: Wednesday notoriously dresses in all black, always. With a decidedly limited palette, what were some choices that you made to make each look unique and stand out among the crowd?

MS: With her look, it has its own feel to it. Like, through Wednesday, through the journey that she does throughout the series, there are certain elements that she has to be quite stealth to get into spaces and be unnoticed. So, when we were thinking about those costumes, we would illuminate the white part of it because she would have to be in darkness all the time and Tim [Burton] wanted her to be stealth.

I think Wednesday has more of a modern look now and [we wanted to] just to try to relate to that generation that is going to be watching her. And also, there’s a lot of fashion within her costume. There are different labels that we use [like the character’s Alaïa prom dress] and [we] integrated different things that we had and had stuff made.

And then from a distance, it was great to see her big chunky trainers, stripey socks, [and] the stripey T-shirt. Whatever she was doing, she would always have some elements of Wednesday with her.

With Enid, [who] is so colorful, there’s a complete separation between the two [characters]. And it was really important that [Wednesday] stood out from the crowd. Also, Jenna [Ortega] made those costumes work, just with her performance: the way she walks, the way she talks. And it was interesting, once you started putting the costumes on her, then Wednesday would appear.

PS: I love how Wednesday’s uniform for school was black, while the others wore a contrasting colorful purple. What were other ways in which you modified her look to stand out from the other students?

MS: [Our goal was] just to create a really individual silhouette for her for that costume. There are certain moments within the series where she is backlit and you can see that it’s Wednesday in her uniform in [contrast] to someone else in their uniform. The hem of the skirt is raised in the front and dropped at the back; it’s a lot longer and a lot fuller than everyone else’s; and she’s got her big shoes at the end of it.

And then the jacket was a lot more fitted, her sleeves are always hanging out of her shirt, the cuffs are always open, the sleeves might be a bit shorter so we can see some cuff. It was just all of those little fine tweaks that made her silhouette completely different from everyone else’s.

I think the skirt is definitely the biggest thing. You can tell when she moves: you see the different fabrics that are underneath it. That skirt is made up of so many individual pieces: it’s just strips on strips of fabric laid on top of each other. So, basically every time she moves, the skirt separates so you see a different fabric in the silhouette underneath. But when she stands still, it closes. So, it’s all about the movement that she has and we really took into consideration that there is an action part of Wednesday Addams within the series so we [thought about] the movements that she’d be doing, [like] fight scenes.

PS: Are there any BTS secrets you can share, be it a silent tribute in costume, a look that never was, or something that was added last minute?

MS: I think for Wednesday […], her school duffel coat is an iconic look for her because it’s so different from everybody else’s. We really wanted to try and find something that had a vintage feel about it and a different shape. And then her backpack we had made because obviously we have Thing in the backpack. A lot of things we [created] made it to the movie, especially for the Addams family and for Pugsley.

With Pugsley, it was interesting to knit his jumper because if you see Pugsley, it’s these straight lines, but we wanted to diffuse [it] so that when you see him and his silhouette, it gives him more of a distorted shape. And Gomez goes through a few things in the movie, like the prison so it was really great to make stuff for him, too.

To me, when I see the Poe Cup, it just made everything so worthwhile. Because we went through different stages of a process for each group. With a lot of discussions with Tim [Burton] and Colleen [Atwood], we had to look into all of the Edgar Allen Poe books for each character and pull out different things that we could add to their costumes like the Black Cats, the cat costumes, and the Jokers.

PS: What was the significance of Principal Weems’s costume?

MS:[For] Principal Weems, we just wanted to take her back to Tippi Hedren and those characters from those movies. You’ll see when she’s sitting at her desk, she’s got a big bird sitting there, she’s got different animals there.

And with Gwendoline [Christie], she wanted to use this jewelry and we collaborated with her. If you look at it, her brooch is a mouth, her bracelet has eyes all around it. Because she’s this character that’s a shapeshifter, all of these things are present within her costume. She’s constantly visually scanning the room. If it’s not with her [body], it’s with her jewelry. We sourced the jewelry. It’s contemporary. It’s from Schiaparelli, which is amazing.

PS: Is there any other inspiration for your ‘Wednesday’ cast costumes besides the previous iterations of the characters?

MS: With Joy [Sunday], who plays Bianca, it was about trying to incorporate high-end sportswear with her character and that would follow through to the other Sirens because they’re all pretty cool.

It was interesting that with all these different groups – the Werewolves, the Vamps, the Sirens – they all had their separate looks we created just through textures and colors. For the Gorgons, we tried to incorporate a lot more earthy colors; the Werewolves more foliage colors; the Sirens more aquatic colors; and then for the Vampires, trying not to keep them black, but maybe use more reds.

PS: We can’t not talk about Christina Ricci’s character. Though she wasn’t a part of the initial casting for the role, once it was decided, were there any costume choices that you made based on her former role as Wednesday Addams? Or were the sartorial choices for her character totally independent of the past?

MS: I think with Christina Ricci’s wardrobe, it had nothing to do with Wednesday Addams at all, it was the complete opposite. When we first see her, I think it takes a while to recognize who that is, and it was just creating a different character, really.

For her, and the teacher that she is and what she’s involved in, [we chose] a lot of things that were to do with plants and foliage [since] she’s always in this conservatory working. So, we thought about coveralls [and] her boots. Most of it had a lot to do with practicality when it came to her look and the work that she does within the school.

Keep scrolling for more looks from ‘Wednesday’ on Netflix.