Gwendoline Christie On Accepting “Extraordinary Invitation” For ‘Wednesday’ Return In “More Expansive” Season 2 Role

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for the entirety of Wednesday Season 2 Part 2.

Wednesday Season 2 pulled out all of the stops when it came to backstories, surprises, plot twists, and the return of previously thought dead characters.

The return of Gwendoline Christie’s Principal Larissa Weems was teased in the trailer for Part 2 of the show’s sophomore season. To be clear, Weems did die in Season 1, but creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar found a wrinkle to bring her back in a different capacity.

“We definitely wanted to bring her back,” Gough said of Christie, while chatting with Deadline this week. “Miles tells the story when we were on set the night that she got killed in Season 1, and we were like, ‘Oh, did we make a huge mistake?’ Gwendoline and Jenna had great chemistry, and those characters really popped. We thought the spirit guide felt like the right approach.”

Christie, whom we spoke to earlier this afternoon, confirmed that she was told while finishing up filming on Season 1 that she might be asked back. It was an exhilarating challenge to play someone dead, because it was something she had yet to face.

“I was so delighted to be told that they would like me to come back to the show. It’s a really extraordinary invitation when someone says they’d like to have you back. The world of Wednesday is so up my street and in my heart,” she shared.

Adding, “Before the first season ended, they mentioned that they might like me to return, which was exciting. They still killed me. They still had me on the floor foaming at the mouth. But after that, it took a while to find the right creative path to bring Weit’s more ems back, but when they told me she was going to be Wednesday’s spirit guide, that was very exciting to me, because then it’s not just a matter of playing the same part again or just picking up from where you left off. This is a new iteration of Weems.”

As Weems says in the opening moments of Episode 5, “Hyde and Woe Seek,” Wednesday and Weems are 13th cousins twice removed, solving the rule that a spirit guide has to be a relative.

“Not many of us contemplate the end of our lives, nor what death might be like. We might be terrified of it and not want to recognize our own mortality. But also, doesn’t want a second chance at life and wants to start again?” Christie continued.

“What’s really fascinating about what Miles and Al have written is that it doesn’t go according to plan. I was excited to see how Larissa had changed. It’s something I thought a lot about. That’s what my main focus was for the dynamic of Weems and Wednesday; it couldn’t just be the same. Weems couldn’t die and just be exactly the same.”

While Morticia and Wednesday are the only people who can see Weems as a spirit guide, she is more expressive this season compared to her strict and stern principal role from last season.

‘We wanted to find a way to bring her back into Wednesday’s life, but in a way where she wasn’t just the principal. Most of her scenes in Season 1, Weems is basically anchored to the desk,” Gough noted of the character. “It’s like in a police show where she’s the captain telling the unruly detective [Wednesday], ‘Stop looking, give me your badge and gun.’ We wanted to find a more expansive way for her to interact with Wednesday.”

Christie noted that Weems’ level of expressiveness conflicted with the era of Nevermore she had left behind and Principal Barry Dort’s (Steve Buscemi) way of positioning the school.

“It was exciting to find that she was a lot more kind of skittish, coquettish, girlish in some ways, but also more emotional, sensitive, and reactive, particularly when she discovers that, with some enthusiasm for being given a second life, almost nobody cared about her in the first place. It’s quite hilarious to play.”

Whether Weems knew about Aunt Ophelia before Wednesday had her connecting psychic vision upon reading her aunt’s journal, Christie wouldn’t say.

“I always work off what is in the script, and in that I work my imaginal, so sometimes, there may be different versions. I did ask how all-seeing or knowing Weems is, and we had different conversations about that. I hope to allow the audience to build their own story in their mind,” she remarked.

“It’s like that wonderful moment in Vertigo when Kim Novak goes into the Hotel and Jimmy Stewart is following her, and you don’t see her leave, but the car leaves. When Hitchcock was asked about it, he said something along the lines of, ‘There’s nothing wrong with leaving the audience with a mystery to solve themselves.’ Personally, I’ve made a million different stories out of that moment before I even knew the literal interpretation of it with the director. So my answer is, ‘Why don’t you choose?’”

As for whether Weems could return in Season 3, Millar and Gough remained tight-lipped. But Christie will always value her time in the kooky universe shaped by the show’s creators and director Tim Burton.

“Part of what attracted me to the project was that, after almost a decade playing Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones, [the job] was dominant in my life, and very happily so. But you give a lot of yourself to a character, particularly in a show that’s running for a long time. So I wanted to play a lot of different parts,” the actress said.

“Tim has given me a lot of confidence. He’s given me the great gift of endorsing me, and saying, ‘What do you think?’ and ‘What are your ideas?’ and integrating those and welcoming them. It’s given me confidence that I take with me in my other work now,” Christie highlighted.

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