While Jenna Ortega is front and center as Wednesday Addams in Wednesday, Netflix's new take on The Addams Family, the titular member of the kooky family has been joined at Nevermore Academy by the "family pet," Thing. The disembodied hand was controlled by actor Victor Dorobantu for the series, but keeping the rest of his body out of the scene sometimes meant wearing a full-body blue screen suit. On Twitter, Netflix shared a few behind-the-scenes photos showing Dorobantu operating Thing before editing would remove all but the hand in post-production. You can see the post below.
Ortega also recently spoke about how Tim Burton, who directed, four of the show's eight episodes, wanted to animate Thing the practical way, as had been done for the 1990s movies. While Ortega and others in the cast and crew would collaborate on Thing's "language," determining what the hand would mean with certain gestures, Thing's actual movements were done the old-fashioned way with Dorobantu controlling his hand with a fake stump applied to give it that disembodied look.
"It was so funny, because the Thing language was just made up on the day," Ortega told Screen Rant. "Tim wanted it to be an actual actor like they did in the 90s films, so it was this magician named Victor [Dorobantu]. He would wear a full blue suit, and he would hide behind walls and underneath beds. Then they built this prosthetic on top of his hand so that it looked like a wrist knob, and he would walk around. Tim really liked his like mannerisms, and he would spend hours in hair and makeup every day just getting that hand on. "
Thing Could Return if Wednesday Gets Renewed
Perhaps we will get to see more of Thing doing this thing in season 2, as the showrunners of Wednesday have teased that another season would include more exploration of the other Addams family members. Given the name of the show, Ortega's Wednesday would always remain at the forefront, but the feeling is that the other family members can also have more to do moving forward. With that said, there hasn't been an official renewal at this time, even with many calls from fans for Netflix to do so.
“We felt like we just touched the surface with those characters and the actors are so amazing in those roles," Miles Millar, who serves as co-showrunner with Al Gough, told TVLine. "[We] definitely want to feature the family as we did this season in a couple of episodes if we were to get a second season."
Wednesday is streaming on Netflix.