Wednesday Creator Breaks Down Bizarre Casting Process for Thing

Thing has been a staple of the Addams Family since the macabre characters were first introduced decades ago. Because of his prominence amongst the likes of Wednesday, Gomez, Morticia, and the rest of the Addams clan, that meant the character was always supposed to be a part of Tim Burton's Wednesday series on Netflix. Not just that, but the character was practically portrayed, with an actor stepping into the role to act as the famed body part.

As Wednesday writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar have revealed, Thing's role in the series was scripted in the earliest parts of development, so there was never an idea as to not include the character. Furthermore, the crew managed to find a Romanian magician to step into the role due to his close-hand abilities.

"He's a Romanian magician who does card tricks, basically. So he has incredible dexterity. We did a lot of auditions for hand people. Tim [Burton] was very, very involved with this. He was sort of obsessed with Thing. It was a lot of time spent actually rehearsing and getting the sign language with our visual effects supervisor," Millar said in a recent chat with Variety. "In our studio, they had actually an old Romanian puppet theater from Romanian TV shows with puppets. And so they'd rehearse in this puppet theater and come back and have video of what he was doing. So it was really intricate and very intentional in terms of making him feel bizarrely complex and real."

Because they managed to land a practical actor for it, rather than doing full CGI on Thing, Millar added it allowed for a more emotional result.

"I think that that moment where you see him stabbed to the column was a risk, because we wanted that to be – for Wednesday – so emotionally devastating," the writer added. "In the wrong hands, it could have been incredibly cheesy and like, 'Oh, my God, really?' But I think it really works because of Jenna's performance, and because you really do at that point believe he's sentient, and that he has feelings and all those things. It was a risk we took, and I think it paid off."

All eight episodes of Wednesday are now streaming on Netflix.

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