Created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, it stars Jenna Ortega as the titular character, with Gwendoline Christie, Riki Lindhome, Jamie McShane, Hunter Doohan, Percy Hynes White, Emma Myers, Joy Sunday, Georgie Farmer, Naomi J. Ogawa, Christina Ricci, and Moosa Mostafa appearing in supporting roles.

Ricci, who had played the titular character in the 1991 film and its 1993 sequel Addams Family Values, was asked by Burton to join the series in a supporting role.

Wednesday's cold, emotionless personality and her defiant nature make it difficult for her to connect with her schoolmates and cause her to run afoul of the school's principal Larissa Weems.

[17] Millar and Gough decided to make the juxtaposition of "outcasts" and "normies", as well as criticism of colonial Americans, major themes in the series.

[36] Later that month, Thora Birch, Riki Lindhome, Jamie McShane, Hunter Doohan, Georgie Farmer, Moosa Mostafa, Emma Myers, Naomi J. Ogawa, Joy Sunday, and Percy Hynes White were announced to be cast as series regulars.

[38] In September, Gwendoline Christie and Victor Dorobantu were added to the cast in starring roles while Isaac Ordonez, George Burcea, Tommie Earl Jenkins, Iman Marson, William Houston, Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo, Oliver Watson, Calum Ross, and Johnna Dias Watson were cast in recurring roles.

[31] In October, a trailer revealed Fred Armisen to be portraying Uncle Fester, and Ricci's role was confirmed as Marilyn Thornhill.

[43] In April 2024, Steve Buscemi joined the cast of the series as the new principal of Nevermore Academy,[44] alongside Thandiwe Newton in an undisclosed role.

[45] In May, the cast for the second season was announced, with Buscemi playing Barry Dort, Billie Piper as Capri, Joanna Lumley as Grandmama, Newton as Dr. Fairburn, alonsgide Evie Templeton, Owen Painter, Noah Taylor, Christopher Lloyd, Frances O'Connor, Haley Joel Osment, Heather Matarazzo, and Joonas Suotamo in undisclosed roles, while Zeta-Jones, Guzmán, Ordonez, and Lewis-Nyawo were promoted to series regulars.

[48][49] Filming locations included Cantacuzino Castle, serving as the setting for the fictional Nevermore Academy, Politehnica University of Bucharest, Sinaia railway station, the Bucharest Botanical Garden, Monteoru House, and the historic Olga Greceanu Mansion in Dâmbovița County, standing in for the Gates mansion.

[53] Ortega called her work on the series "very stressful and confusing" and "the most overwhelming job I've ever had" due to the production's fast-tracked shooting schedule.

[33] According to actress Joy Sunday, the canoeing lessons were especially strenuous, involving the entire cast and some dozen stuntmen racing each other for an hour daily, with days starting as early as 5:30 am.

[65] In December 2021, it was reported that longtime Burton collaborator Danny Elfman joined the series to compose the original theme[66] and co-compose its score with Chris Bacon.

[68][69] The score also incorporates a number of classical works, including The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi, Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto, The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns, Gnossienne No.

[70] In his review of the series, Tony Sokol of Den of Geek called the score "a major character, not only thematically, but as an emotional delivery system", making "the chills creepier, the jokes funnier, and the tingles tangible".

[80] In December 2022, Netflix released a promotional video to its Twitter account depicting Thing, a sentient disembodied hand appearing in the series, roaming the streets of New York City and capturing the reactions of passersby.

[86] Three weeks after its release, it became the second-most watched English-language Netflix series in the history of the platform, reaching an estimated 150 million households and totaling 1 billion viewing hours by December 2022.

The website's critics consensus reads, "Wednesday isn't exactly full of woe for viewers, but without Jenna Ortega in the lead, this Addams Family-adjacent series might as well be another CW drama.

[90] Ed Power of The Daily Telegraph gave Wednesday four out of five stars and called it "an addictively rococo romp that unfolds like a cross between Euphoria and Hotel Transylvania".

[91] John Anderson of The Wall Street Journal commended Ortega's "charismatic performance" and called the series "often delightful, despite its deliberate darkness".

[92] In his "B"-review for The Detroit News, Tom Long deemed the series visually appealing and described Ortega's deadpan as "just as elastic as it needed to be" and her performance overall as "consistently [pushing] outside the caricature enough to keep things lively".

[95] Commenting on its tone, Jesse Hassenger of TheWrap described the four episodes directed by Burton as feeling more like Veronica Mars than Sleepy Hollow.

[125][126][127] This resulted in a large increase in plays of the song on Spotify[128] and on-demand streams in the United States, surging by 415 percent in the week after the series's release.