Interview: ‘Wednesday’ Production Designer Mark Scruton On Expanding the World of The Addams

When you watch Netflix’s hit series Wednesday, there’s so much to appreciate: the haunting music, the elaborate costumes, the killer performances, and Jenna Ortega‘s goth dance that has taken social media by storm, are some just some of the things that come to mind. At the top of list has to be the incredible world building for this cast of outcasts to play, dance, sleuth and kill in.

For production designer Mark Scruton (No Time to Die, Pennyworth), he was given the monumental task of not only designing the look and feel of the world of Wednesday Addams, but also literally building it. It was a year long project that had him traveling across the globe to transform Romania into the Vermont setting for the series.

Collaborating with executive producer and director Tim Burton, Scruton’s monumental task included 70 shooting locations, building a town from the ground up, and designing some instantly iconic sets. All his while making sure Wednesday would feel familiar enough for returning fans while also making it something of their own. The results speak for themselves.

I sat down to speak with Scruton about his work on the series, where his journey as an artist began, easter eggs, that dance, and so much more. It is a fascinating conversation which somehow made me appreciate his work and the series even more.

Steven Prusakowski / Awards Radar: I had early access to the series and enjoyed it so much, and was curious what the response would be. Then a few days later, the rest of the world got to see it. And the reaction has been so positive. People are loving it and that love just seems to keep growing. I am seeing Wednesday all all over the place. What’s it like being involved with something that’s this well received, and has such natural momentum?

Mark Scruton: It’s very weird. I didn’t expect it. I mean, I hoped it would do well – you always do with these things, but you never can tell. Over the years, you work on huge projects that are going to be next big thing and then no one ever goes to see them. So, you can’t predict it. But this you know, I’m so pleased because this show, so many people put so much work into it. And it really tested everybody to the max to get it done.  I’m really pleased for everybody that worked on it, that it’s done so well. It’s great. It’s really bizarre, though, when you walk down the street and you hear people talking about it completely unrelated to yourself, and you had to pull yourself out a little bit sharp, sort of realize that it has become this massive thing. It’s great.

Steven Prusakowski :You’re not born working on this level of work as a production designer – at some point, the journey begins. Where did it start for you? Was there a film or a series or something that inspired you to pursue this career?

Mark Scruton: It’s funny, I kind of always wanted to do something like this. When I was very young, before I even went to school, I used to dose up on 50s B-movies and stuff that was on TV, like Crack in the World. It isn’t the other ones I used to love Krakatoa: East of Java, any of those movies that involve models and effects and so but pretty low rent stuff, but you know, great stuff. Even when you watch today, it still has a quality to it, which I love. After I watched them, I would then go away and try to recreate it somehow. I’d be outside cutting making cardboard models or something. This is before I even went to school. So there was definitely that tendency even then. As I got a bit older things like Star Wars came along and all these amazing Spielberg films.

It was always that trajectory that I wanted to follow. I always wanted to make movies. I got my first camera, I think when I was eight, and joined the local moviemaking club and I think the next oldest person was in the mid 30s. I was quite an anomaly at that point because it was just before people started to realize that it was a career path, I think. But I’ve always wanted to do it, always wanted to make films and I’ve always wanted to create worlds. And I think, you know, I thought you toy with different aspects of filmmaking, but it always came down to the world building and the designing. And even at school, I was very good at making things that look cool, but they never necessarily worked, but they always look cool.

Steven Prusakowski: That’s fantastic. It’d be interesting to see a portfolio of your work, from eight years old until now. To witness your visual journey?

Mark Scruton: Maybe. Maybe, not. (laughs) It always sounds much better in my head than when you look at these things in reality.

Steven Prusakowski: Yeah, but I think there’s something special about that early work. My youngest daughter has a very creative energy. It’s funny. I know, you’ve worked on Wonder Woman 1984. When she saw the first Wonder Woman film, as soon as it ended she asked for scissors, tape, and a cardboard box. She left the room and came back wearing a full costume – from the wristbands, the boots, the belt, shield, head band – every single part of the costume.  It was incredible because she was about 6 or 7. I mention that because I think there’s just something that’s in certain people – there’s some creative drive ingrained in them. I think it’s tough for many of us to look back at your own art and appreciate it. I love to know where that started and how you got here.

Mark Scruton: It’s interesting, my family, my mum and dad, were not in the creative industry. So, it was always slightly going against type – what I was doing. But it’s ended up alright, I think, so far.

Steven Prusakowski: I mean, I think you’re doing great. Let’s talk Wednesday. When you take on this project not only do you get to work on a property that has its own visual style history, but you’re now working with the visual genius of Tim Burton, is there a lot of pressure jumping into something with somebody with that strong of a vision, and what was that collaboration like?

Mark Scruton: In terms of pressure, I think if I stopped for a minute to think about it, yeah, so as a huge amount of pressure. You know, whatever, whatever job you take on however small however big, you’re always hoping to be progressing from where you were forced, there’s always that pressure anyway. And to get this job, I mean, Tim Burton has been a massive influence on me anyway, in my life, you know, all his all his films, all his work of just, you know, I love them. His style, and his look has always been very heavy in my world, and just everything about the show had that that pressure of expectation. You’ve got a franchise behind it, that people will undoubtedly relate back to the TV show, and the amazing films and everything else that has a real history of expectation behind it.

And the same with Tim, you know, there’s, there’s a huge weight of expectation behind that. And to try and think about if too long, I think you would just paralyze yourself. So really, almost, in the beginning, I had to try and train myself not to focus on those things, and always just focus on the job in hand, otherwise, you get completely hung up.

That became kind of key to everything, if you tried to go out and do something, or you tried to, deliberately go down a path that was trying to mimic something that happened before or any of those things you were going to fail. Tim and I, we both looked at the job at hand, and this is what we’re trying to do. And this is how we’re trying to do it, and what serves the story best, and what environment serves the story best. Tim was great to work with, because that’s how he approaches things anyway. And there was never any question of ‘oh, how is this going to be better than what’s done before?’ Or is this it was always, you know, is this relevant to the script? Is this relevant to the characters? Does it need to be this big or all those things?

We spent quite a long time in London before production started, just visiting two or three times a week, and I just looked through different ideas that were developing. And it sort of tells me if we were hitting the right marks, or if we were going completely off track, and we’re looking at some other ideas, and I’d go away and come back and would talk through it again. But I think it was very important actually, that we started very small and kept, you know, the weight of expectation away from the whole project and just focused on what we’re trying to do and get on with it. The momentum then picked up and you don’t have time to think about it after that. 

Steven Prusakowski: It’s obviously not a small task at all. There’s a lot of history behind this character, which I’ll ask about as well. I’m curious, you said you would go to London and meet up. What are those meetings with Tim like? Are you just talking? Sharing hand drawn sketches? 3d models? What is some of the process? Because it seems such a monumental task to build the world. Where does it all start?

Mark Scruton: With something like this, you have to do it, do it in stages, and work on smaller pieces. You obviously know the overarching things you want to try and achieve. But if you try and do everything at once, it all falls apart. So you start with something key to the beginning. Then, everything hopefully builds off that. We knew we had to focus on Wednesday’s dorm – that was the primary factor. We knew that was the key to it all, because we spent a lot of time in there and everything stems from there. There’s a lot of things we didn’t know – we didn’t know where we’re going to shoot it necessarily, or what we’re going to build and what was going to be our location, but we knew that we had to build that. And we knew that was going to be a key set, wherever we were where we did it. 

So I would do some hand sketches, Tim would give me some ideas, you know, we would, then I would then maybe make some very rough 3d models, we even make cardboard models to discuss space and architecture and how it was going to work. And then I had an illustrator working with me in London, who would then work those ideas up into more fully fledged production visuals, and we’d work on those. Every week, we do a review with the show runners, Alfred (Gough) and Miles (Millar) and look at where we were going with it all and just talk about those things. We started small, but from that one thing, everything else fell in place behind it.

It gave you certain rules that you had to apply to everything else. You know, and it was very simplistic, the monochrome versus the color and those things. It all existed in that one set and then it just extrapolated out across the whole, the whole world. Then you just dealt with everything as you needed to do it; the schedule of work that you knew you had to follow to get to certain things on certain dates. So that sort of drove our creative process from there on after.

Steven Prusakowski: Again, I think it’d be fascinating to see the cardboard models and sketches and the evolution because it’s such a visually stunning show. My mother-in-law happened to be over while watching the first two episodes, and she is picky. But she was really enjoying Wednesday. She liked the macabre nature of it, but also the look of the series. As she left she asked where to find it on her Netflix account because I want to watch it. It is so great to see a series that connects with such a wide audience – from 12 to 80 in my house alone. That gets to my next question, what was your initial goal, because so you have, of course, The Addams Family and the history on film, TV and on paper. You want to do something that stands out and feels fresh, but it has to stay faithful enough. What you created feels familiar, but all at the same time, has a lot of unique elements. So how did you kind of find that balance?

Mark Scruton: Well, you said it exactly. It’s finding that sweet spot where everything feels like it’s in the right place, but it’s we you know, we’re expanding that world and we’re making it and our own thing and developing it. And a lot of it came down, in very simplistic terms, it came down to silhouettes and how you would work with the shadows to give you very recognizable forms and shapes. And then you can work within them. There’s certain things that are reminiscent of the Addams Family that you can instantly draw the silhouette of the mansion and people kind of know what you’re talking about. And while we didn’t want to be as obvious as that, you could apply that and take that into the (Nevermore) Academy and use it. We didn’t copy the mention at all for the academy but the roofline, if you looked at it in silhouette, you’d immediately go ‘oh yes, this is The Addams Family.’  But, at the same time, you’re trying to give that world an expansive quality to it. 

You had all the other elements of the school and the school was meant to be this safe haven for outcasts. So it gave us the opportunity to bring in lots of different architectural styles and ideas into the school without it looking wrong. And we could still tweak it and play with it, but also always keeping that stuff. What’s great about it is that, is Tim’s style, obviously, complements that look perfectly. You’re always working with grays and blacks and whites, and then you can then pick your color pops and make the characters work within that. We’re always fighting all the other franchises that using similar themes. You’re never going to be able to, because certain things are common to all those, so you’re never going to be able to be completely unique.

But what you’re trying to find is something that services the story properly, and isn’t just being over the top for the sake of it, and is giving you that world that feels familiar without copying. That was always a trick. You think, ‘How can we bring this into the world? And how can we, how can we expand it?’ I think Weems’ (Gwendoline Christie‘s character) office always felt like the one where we hit the right marks with it, because it’s got lots of richness, it’s got lots of texture, but it’s got different elements that really push it away from what you traditionally think is the Addams Family, and yet it doesn’t feel wrong in in that world. It has brutalist furniture and concrete lamps, and it has modern technology, and it has all things. But in the end, it feels like it belongs to that world. I think that’s what we tried to do,

Steven Prusakowski: When you described the approach, it makes me think how Wednesday’s world feels like this could fit in the Tim Burton cinematic universe, where the Edward Scissorhands castle could be in the next town over. Not the same style, but the essence of the type of work that he takes on. I think this fits into that. Instantly identifiable and yet, it’s only something brand new.

Mark Scruton: That’s exactly it. And it was, it’s very difficult, because there’s so much history to both, to Tim’s world and to the Addams Family, so you’re always sort of dancing that balance. Hopefully we got it right.

Steven Prusakowski: I think you did. So, why Romania? What was it about Romania that made it the place to shoot this series?

Mark Scruton: We looked at lots of places. Toronto was our first target we aimed at. It was funny because we were making this post COVID. We’re still within the COVID rules, but we’re, the lockdowns had finished and other places and production had just gone crazy at that point. One thing we did know is we needed lots of space. The more I dug into this grip, with Tim, the more obvious it was we needed a world and we couldn’t just do it on a small scale, it had to have the scope that it had. So it quickly became apparent that Toronto didn’t have enough space for us. It was very busy at the time and what we could get there wasn’t going to work.

We looked at lots of places and Romania just had the magic combination. It had a studio that had lots of available space. That was great. It had lots of good shooting opportunities around the studio, which was also perfect for us. And Romania had lots of great locations that were also going to work for us. It had great lakes and it had great architecture and it had interesting landscapes and you know, Transylvania had some great opportunities there. It really was the combination of things that fell into place and, and all worked in our favor. It was the best place we could have been for the show.

Steven Prusakowski: How much inspiration did you draw from the architecture of Romanian architecture? Because I know the Nevermore building is actually there. But you also built a lot of practical sets.

Mark Scruton: It was really good for us actually architecture related because when we first started looking at it, we were locked ourselves slightly into this Gothic Revival, American Victorian feel. Which is fine, that fits the show. When I started scouting Romania and just being in Bucharest, they had a really rich texture of architecture there. There were these extraordinary buildings jammed in together Ottoman and Brutalist and 60s and Parisien. All sorts of stuff all jumbled up together. You just walk around the streets in Bucharest, and you be like, ‘Wow, this is fascinating.’ And whilst we probably didn’t exploit it as much as we could have done, possibly, we certainly use that as an excuse more to get in to get different styles into the world.

So Nevermore was far richer, I think, for that than it maybe would have been if we hadn’t gone there. We found, obviously, the location in Transylvania Cantacuzino. Yes, we changed it a lot. But obviously, some of that led to architectural choices; The quad, I used Moorish influences for the arches, and then played with them to make them look like angry faces, and were all around the edge. You could interchange that architecture without pushing it too far and still make it feel like it belonged in that sort of world – and still make it believable that it was in Vermont – which was the next problem we had on the show.

Steven Prusakowski: There’s so much to explore. But the dorm room and the approach there with this visual contrast between Wednesday and her roommate, Enid (Emma Myers). You kind of touched upon it, but could you dig a little deeper into it to discuss the process of developing that set and the end result?

Mark Scruton: Yeah, I mean, it’s very clear in the script, it had to be this divided space, because it was all about conflict. You know, the opposites and everything else and all the themes were there already. So that was a really good brief to get your hands on, because sometimes you have to really fight to find a hook on something. But it’s pretty clear how it was going to work. Then, building a logic into it, and then building that, the reality of it – that takes a bit more time. We wanted this window to dominate the space. When I was first playing around with it was like, well, you know, if it’s cut down the middle, and half can be stained glass and half can be clear, and then you really split it. Then the light comes in, and washes everything inside and you get this amazing, really, really up the contrast on it. The difficulty came then was how does that work? And you know, how does it suddenly become half stained glass and half clear. 

So, we decided that it was much more hands on and she’d actually done all the stained glass coloring herself. It was all gels and then Wednesday could strip it off. It was sort of backing into this idea that it was architecturally split down the middle and then trying to figure out the different spaces. We’re in that room a lot. It was always gonna be tricky to give you enough interest in the room like that, plus make it believable. We didn’t want them to just exist in a barn, it also had to have scale and a degree of majesty to it. We started playing with that, and I started playing with the smaller areas. So as you come in, you’re into a little vaulted area with arches, which is a little bit smaller and more intimate before you come into the bigger space.

Now you’ve got more intimate parts of the room to work with. Then you have the neutral zone in the middle and the spinning fan light in the bottom of the main round window, which gets you onto the balcony. That was all built composite with the idea was whichever side of the window you came out of reflected whose side you’re on and that sort of stuff. So yeah, there’s lots of visual gags in there to try and make that division as obvious as it can. In a way that wasn’t, you know, we weren’t trying to be subtle about it. Obviously. It was tricky to get it right. Because you know, you could have ended up with a huge set and the girls feel completely dehumanized in it, which wasn’t the idea. You have to have a space that’s interesting and you can keep shooting in for eight episodes without people getting bored of it.

Steven Prusakowski: There’s so much detail in there that really captures the spirit of the characters. That’s what I loved about it. Just seeing this dorm, without the characters being in the room, without being it introduced – it tells its own story.

Mark Scruton: That was definitely you know, we spent a lot of time with Rob Hepburn, the set decorator, and myself looking at the pieces to go in there and making sure they were very specific and had a meaning. Everything was there because it should be. And that’s, that’s how Tim is, you know, Tim, as much as he’s got these grand visions and everything else. He’s actually a minimalist when you get into the nitty gritty of it.  Nothing was there that shouldn’t have been there. The desk was specifically chosen – we got that from London, and we brought it in.

Then everything on Wednesday’s side was specifically treated so it was all stripped back and given this black stain. It took ages to figure out how we’re going to do it because it had to be just right so you could see that it wasn’t just lacquered, it had a wooden quality to it. Even the cello had that treatment too, so everything was specifically done; the gramophone, and the little cabinet and the crystal ball case, we had custom made. They were designed to mimic the Addams Family House, so it’s a little piece of home that she brings with her. And Enid’s side, it was the polar opposite. And as I’ve said about that before, the more we added to Enid’s side, the more we stripped out of Wednesday’s side. We ended up with so much stuff on Enid’s side. It was amazing how that contrast, just got better the more you took out of Wednesday’s. It worked well, in the end.

Steven Prusakowski: So you’ve kind of touched upon it a few. Are there any easter eggs or exclusives that you could share with us?

Mark Scruton: Easter eggs are definitely becoming a thing on this show. In there, specifically, not so much, because it was all character driven specifics. We didn’t want to spoil that. There are other ones dotted around. Some things were specifically there – some things were just little teasers to get people going. We had three things going on.  We were trying to bury clues in the plot. There’s lots of things in there that are plot driven. So we were constantly burying little motifs into architecture and gravestones. Even on some characters’ walls, we were having them custom printed, so they had specific patterns in them. No one’s ever going to pick up on them, but we knew they were there. It’s nice to have those threads running through. Then there are Addams Family easter eggs. Things like a lot of the shops in Jericho were taken from the Charles Addams cartoons. We used those as inspiration to serve as shop fronts that guide you. Unless you’re very, very familiar with Charles Addams’ cartoons, you probably wouldn’t spot them. But again, they all just give it that richness to it – a depth of look that we were trying to get. And then there are some Tim Burton and ones in there as well.

Steven Prusakowski: I’m looking forward to rewatching it with a new perspective. Luckily my wife fell asleep about the fourth episode in and my kids and I just continued binging through. So I have another excuse to go revisit. I am curious are there enough visual clues in there that when you rewatch it, it’ll be like, watching The Sixth Sense the second time and you go ‘Wait a second, how did I not catch all these clues? How did I not know?’

Mark Scruton: I mean, probably not. Because most of the clues we put in there weren’t story driven, so they are never really featured this. Yes. If you really backed back into it and study you could probably spot certain things. It’s not quite like the big ‘Aaaah!,’ from ‘The Sixth Sense,’ but it is all there.

Steven Prusakowski: Are there any favorite locations or settings that you just take the most pride in besides the dorm room? 

Mark Scruton: There’s lots about Cantacuzino and that was obviously a challenge to make that work for us. The Botanical Gardens were a great location for us. We tried a lot to try and figure out how to make that work as a set. We could never quite, with the limitations of budget and time, never really line it up for us. But then we found the Botanical Gardens. And again, it was never not an easy fit, but we managed to engineer it so that we could fit the classroom into it. We had to raise the floor level up by about three feet to create a floor because it was all concrete – different levels and planters and everything else. We had to put a whole floor and build around all the trees and plants that were already growing there. It gave it this really interesting look of everything sort of growing out the floor. Plus, it was on the rounds. We had to have had to have all the tables specially made so they mimic the roundness of the room, so it all fitted in. At the end of it really felt like the whole thing belonged together, which I think worked really well. I was really pleased with how it came out in the end. Because if you looked at it without anything in it, you would have no idea how on earth we did it. Which is always pleasing.

Steven Prusakowski: The amount of detail and the amount of craftsmanship found in this series is so incredible. How long were you in Romania? What was the window from the day you joined, to then being on location until completion?

Mark Scruton: I was on the show for about a year, beginning to end. I was in Romania for about nine months, maybe maybe 10 months. It’s got a bit blurry at the end, because we had several COVID, shutdowns and everything extended and got a bit protracted. So, yeah, it was about a year overall. We chopped and changed and moved around them as we looked. It took a while to settle ourselves in certain things. When we pivoted to Romania, obviously, it became quite apparent that the term Jericho was kind of a problem because it didn’t exist. Some of the other places like Canada, obviously, was an easier job to find a real place. But Romania had no such thing. So that became suddenly a time pressured thing, because we had 16 weeks start to finish to build Jericho. And keep in mind, it was a complete build. There were no CG top ups or anything. It was a whole build, everything you see is real. So it was a very big job. And it was definitely time pressured in the end, even though we’d spent a long time there. It was a long stint. It’s quite a commitment, but it paid off.

Steven Prusakowski: It’s quite a commitment, but it paid off.  I’ll say it again, just how much my daughters have enjoyed it; they’re my gauge. But if numerous generations are enjoying it from different perspectives in different ways. For example the whole dance scene, which has a very unique feel to itself, and the reaction to her dance. You know it is going to live on at high schools as they copy it all for years to come.

Mark Scruton: The response to the dance is amazing. You know, I didn’t expect that at all. Even though the dance was brilliant. When we were watching it being shot. It was brilliant. From the very first time I read the script, months, months before, it’s like, ‘Wow, okay, Wednesday Addams dancing, this is going to be an interesting challenge.’ When we saw it on the day, everyone’s anxiety was mostly about the blood raining from the ceiling. The tension on that was massive. ‘Oh, God, here’s the dance.’ And Jenna just came in and did this thing. It’s like, ‘Wow! That’s pretty cool.’

I had no idea it’d be received like this and become this huge craze. Which is great. But you’re absolutely right. The one thing I did not expect from this show is the reaction from across the generations. I’ve got a 10 year old and he loves it. And my mum equally loves it. And she vehemently maintains that’s not a bias, and she would have loved it anyway. So I take her word on. She’s watched some of my other stuff, and it’s not as complimentary. I’m assuming that’s true. It does seem to be spooky enough without being too spooky and the characters, interesting, but complex enough to engage you. It’s yeah, it hits all the marks.

Steven Prusakowski:What was Jenna Ortega and the rest of the cast, what was their reaction the first time they get into those sets? Do you get any feedback from them?

Mark Scruton: From what I did see, I think they were suitably impressed by everything. It’s hard because the process we were working with, we will always try and have everything ready as much as possible. Sometimes you’re down to the wire, but as much as possible. Tim likes to have stuff ready well in advance of shooting on it, and always likes to take the actors on in private, very quietly, or before we go on to shoot so they’ve all got time to you know, see their environment, see the world – just walk through it with Tim any comments on anything.  You know, what they like, what don’t they like – just to get them into the world. Tim likes to do that in a very quiet personal way. So, I’m never normally there for that, that moment. But generally, the fact that everyone seemed very happy after those meetings tells me all I needed to know. Whenever you took anybody sending them to Jericho or onto the quad, you know, there was an audible gasp normally, because of the scale of them all. It was a fun show to do. It was always nice opening a set for the crew and everyone.

Steven Prusakowski: Someday when Netflix opens their theme park with all their properties, this is going to be a main attraction. I guarantee my daughter’s will demand we go so we can walk through all the amazing spaces. I’m planting that seed right now. And finally, what can we look forward to in season two? Because we know what’s happening. There’s no way this is stopping now after the success.

Mark Scruton: I’ll be honest. I honestly don’t have any idea about season two. No, no one has mentioned it to me at all. So that’ll be a great adventure if that happens. Until then, I’ll just have to try and imagine it myself. Funnily enough, my son has been vehemently writing his own treatment for season two, which I’ve said I’ll share to the show runners if it’s good.

Steven Prusakowski: I’ll echo what I said before, it’s just really wonderful to see the reaction. I was actually at the New York City Comic Con panel, to hear the cast speak and for the launch of the trailer. And it gave me the chills. I was like, this is fantastic. And the crowd reaction was great. Now months later it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. For all the artists involved, and actors, and everyone, it must be just so rewarding.

Mark Scruton: They were such a great team. And they really, really stepped up to this challenge, because it was not an easy challenge wherever you did it in the world. They put their heart and souls into it, all of them. And for them, as much as anything, I’m so pleased, it’s been well received. I’ve been in touch with them recently now, since it’s come out. And they’re all chuffed to bits and you know, rightly say they did an amazing job.

Steven Prusakowski: Well, thank you so much for your time, and congratulations on your beautiful work on Wednesday.

[Note: this interview has been edited for clarity]

Check out all of Mark Scruton’s creepy, kooky and marvelous work on Wednesday, streaming exclusively on Netflix.