This story about “Wednesday” costume designer Colleen Atwood first appeared in the Down to the Wire: Comedy issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.
When Colleen Atwood was a child, her parents had a Charles Addams sketch hanging on a wall in their home. So when the four-time Oscar winner was hired to design the costumes for Netflix’s “Wednesday,” she was well acquainted with the world of the amusingly macabre clan that Addams first created in comic strip form in 1938.
For Atwood, the challenge was to honor that legacy while bringing Gomez, Morticia, Wednesday and Pugsley Addams (plus Thing!) into the 21st century.
“My vision for the costumes was a contemporary connectivity feeling, for young people to see the Addams family as people, as opposed to cartoonish,” she said.
“Wednesday” is Atwood’s fifteenth collaboration with Tim Burton, who exec-produced the series and directed four of the eight episodes — including the very first one, which earned Atwood her second Emmy nomination.