Netflix‘s breakout hit Wednesday has started production on its second season and has added a dozen actors to its cast.
Filming has begun in Ireland — a change from the first season, which was primarily shot in Romania — on comedy fantasy, which stars Jenna Ortega as the sleuthing Wednesday Addams as she attends Nevermore Academy.
The production has added as series regulars Steve Buscemi (The Big Lebowski), Billie Piper (Scoop), Evie Templeton (Return to Silent Hill), Owen Painter (Tiny Beautiful Things) and Noah Taylor (Law & Order: Organized Crime).
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The series has also lined up a series of familiar names for guest star roles: Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future), Joanna Lumley (Fool Me Once), Thandiwe Newton (Westworld), Frances O’Connor (The Missing), Haley Joel Osment (The Kominsky Method), Heather Matarazzo (The Princess Diaries) and Joonas Suotamo. Lloyd also played Uncle Fester in the 1991 Addams Family film.
In addition, several returning actors from the first season have been upped to series regulars: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Luis Guzmán, Isaac Ordonez and Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo.
The debut season of Wednesday ranks as Netflix’s most popular English-language series, with 252 million views, and spent 20 weeks in the streamer’s global Top 10. Tim Burton is the show’s executive producer; director and Al Gough and Miles Millar are the creators and showrunners. “We are thrilled that the entire Addams family will be enrolling in Nevermore Academy this season along with a dream cast of icons and new faces,” Gough and Millar said in a statement.
This year, Ortega also is teaming with Burton on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel to his beloved 1988 fantasy comedy, which is being released in theaters Sept. 6.
