A Haunting Lady Gaga and a Glammed-Up Addams Family Arrive at Nevermore

[This story contains spoilers from Wednesday season two, Part 2.]

Since it was announced that Lady Gaga would appear in Part 2 of Wednesday season two, fans have speculated over what role she would play in Nevermore’s tales of woe. That question was answered in haunting fashion in episode six, “Woe Thyself,” when Gaga was revealed as the ghost of Rosaline Rotwood, a Raven like Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) and a former teacher at the school.

When Wednesday seeks out Rotwood in hopes of regaining her psychic ability, in true Raven fashion, Rotwood exacts a price: Wednesday and Enid (Emma Myers) are forced to switch bodies, Freaky Friday style, with the threat of death hanging over their heads if they don’t gain a truer understanding of one another. (Oh, woe.)

To coincide with her Wednesday debut, Gaga also officially dropped her new song, “The Dead Dance,” alongside a Tim Burton-directed music video Wednesday morning.

The writers created a backstory and biography for Rotwood, explains Mark Sutherland, who together with Colleen Atwood designed the season’s costumes. To create her ghostly garments, “we went back to where she came from and took the silhouettes for her look from the period, which is the 1930s, and that gave us the perfect shape,” Sutherland says. “She is a Raven, so there are certain elements: We embroidered feathers on the sleeve that you can just get a little glimpse of as the light catches it.”

He adds, “There’s also a little feather edging, so as she floats through the air we have a bit of movement going on, and we put this huge, very light veil over the top of it so we could give it a ghostly look. It was great because the light caught it from the top, and I thought it was just a great reveal.”

And while Stefani Germanotta is known by millions as one character — her stage name, Lady Gaga — Sutherland says she was all in on shedding that image to support the world of Wednesday. “She’s so into the character, she’s into the show,” he says, “so it was great to be able to work with her because it was all about that character [Rotwood], not about the other character, Lady Gaga.”

An even bigger fashion moment occurs in episode seven, “Woe Me the Money,” when Nevermore hosts the fundraising gala arranged by Principal Dort (Steve Buscemi). The Addams family, along with most of the cast, are decked out in their finest 18th century-inspired ball attire for the event, with Dort and Joanna Lumley’s Grandmama Hester Frump arriving by gondola.

The showstopping gala required a whole season’s worth of preparation, says Atwood. The designers kept the theme in mind and started gathering materials even as they prepared for the earlier episodes, filtering the gala’s vintage Venetian inspiration through a modern lens.

“It evolves as you’re working and as you’re shooting,” she says. “The people making the clothes within our workroom, whenever they had a minute where they were not doing regular stuff, [they could] create a corset or do something really fun. Because getting to make that kind of stuff is pretty rare, and it’s really fun to do.”

In addition to costume construction done by their own team, they partnered with workrooms in Italy and the U.K. to craft items, with Atwood and Sutherland checking in on the progress regularly as they designed the principal actors’ costumes.

Out of the many looks in the episode, certain outfits stood out to each designer. For Sutherland, it was Pugsley’s (Isaac Ordonez) jester costume. “Every single element, every single triangle, is singularly cut and put together with this fine braid,” he notes. “I just loved the way he looked in that costume, because you have all these big dresses and masks and everything, and then you have him.”

Another favorite? “Obviously, Morticia,” he says. “The whole family, as they came down the staircase, I thought they looked amazing. It’s not really just one costume, it’s the whole look overall.” Catherine Zeta-Jones wears a black gown with gold accents and an exaggerated waist, along with a matching black headdress, while Luis Guzmán, as Gomez, wears a ruffled shirt and intricately embroidered period coat that’s reminiscent of the actor’s Count of Monte Cristo days.

Atwood agrees that the combination of the cast’s looks together is what makes the gala so special, noting, “I love the anti-ball vibe of Jenna’s dress. It was like, ‘I don’t want to be at the ball, but I have a dress anyway that’s great.’”

She adds, “I loved doing the big dresses on Gwendoline [Christie, who plays Principal Weems] and Lumley that were just insanely — especially making that dress for Gwendoline Christie, who’s 6 feet tall, in that period, is just fun to do.” Christie’s off-white gown features bell sleeves and a tiered hoop skirt, along with a matching vintage mask. “[She’s 6-foot-3] in the shoes, and she just wears clothes amazingly. It was just great, all the layering of it was really fun, and I thought the set was spectacular with the water entry, and all of that made it even more amazing for us.”

Of the emerald dress Agnes (Evie Templeton) wears to the ball, signaling that she’s coming into her own, Atwood notes, “I love that color on redheads. It’s such a great color for red hair. … She wasn’t copying Wednesday, but you didn’t really want to do a pastel, so you go with the rich color.”

The big swing of the gala is indicative of the production team’s goals for the second season, Atwood says. “It’s always Charles Addams’ world because that’s the origin of the characters, and because we’re working with a visionary like Tim [Burton] and we’re using the style of shooting that Tim does, it’s taking that and pushing it into another level, opening it up a little bit more,” she notes. “Even though we’re at the school a lot, we’re doing big things at the school. It’s not claustrophobic, in two rooms. They go out — there’s the Day of the Dead festival, a huge party. It’s making the internal world a bigger world.”

Another guiding principle was taking the Addams family and bringing them into the modern day, Sutherland notes: “These are people we can relate to as characters and also, especially with Wednesday and Enid, that people can take elements from their costumes and make it their own and relate to it. I think that’s really important.”

Wednesday season two, Part 2, released Sept. 3 and is now streaming on Netflix.