Why Gwendoline Christie Returned to <i>Wednesday</i>: ‘Sometimes You Fall in Love with a Character’

Spoilers below.

When it comes to Netflix’s Wednesday, anything is possible. That’s why, when Gwendoline Christie’s character, Principal Larissa Weems, purportedly died in season 1, viewers weren’t fully convinced that she was gone for good.

Sure, after Marilyn Thornhill (Christina Ricci) poisoned her, she collapsed, foamed at the mouth, and convulsed until drawing her final breath with Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) by her side. But what’s an untimely death to a show that resurrected an evil pilgrim?

Theories that Weems wasn’t really dead spread online as fans were reluctant to accept Christie’s departure. She was, in fact, a captivating force at Nevermore Academy and too compelling to lose. Thankfully, the powers that be brought her back for season 2, part 2, and announced her homecoming at a live event in Sydney, Australia, last month. Without warning, Christie emerged on stage with her castmates, sending the crowd into a frenzy.

“It was never the intention that I was to return,” the English actress tells ELLE. “In no bad way, part of what attracted me to the project was that I wouldn’t be tied into a long-running series, having just finished almost a decade on Game of Thrones. It seemed exciting. It felt like I could give everything to this project—and I’d wanted to work with Tim Burton my entire life.”

But after playing Weems in Wednesday’s debut season, Christie’s one-and-done mindset changed. “Sometimes you fall in love with a character, and you don’t want to stop playing them,” she says.

The writers’ room got to work and devised a darkly humorous plot twist: Weems would come back as Wednesday’s new spirit guide, revealing herself as a distant relative. Together, the prickly pair would continue Wednesday’s investigation of Judi Spannagel (Heather Matarazzo), the normie-turned-avian-outcast, and Tyler Galpin (Hunter Doohan), the bloodthirsty Hyde who busted out of Willow Hill Psychiatric Hospital at the end of part 1.

“I loved being related to Wednesday. I thought that was very imaginative,” Christie says, beaming. “We’re thirteenth cousins, twice removed. It was just perfect. It was so hilarious, and it set up a sort of sweetness and awful tension, which is very fun to play.”

Christie thrives in roles with nuance. On Game of Thrones, she was the formidable yet kind-hearted Brienne of Tarth. And on Severance, she played the haunting goatherd Lorne, whose ferocity brewed beneath her submission to Lumon Industries. In their own way, these characters—for which she earned Emmy nominations in 2019 and this year, respectively—feel supernatural but also deeply human. Returning as Weems, Christie captures this dichotomy once again, this time as a ghost grappling with real emotions.

Speaking with ELLE, Christie reflects on Weems’s spectral comeback, reuniting with Tim Burton and Jenna Ortega, and finding inspiration while navigating grief.

Before the series ended, the team talked to me and said they would like me to return. It took them a little while to formulate the right creative story for Larissa Weems to come back. As soon as they knew what that was, I was delighted. I love this show, I love this character, and I really adore working with Tim Burton, Jenna Ortega, Miles Millar, Alfred Gough, and the whole creative team. It’s my idea of a spectacular sort of heaven.

I was over the moon because this presented a new acting challenge. I have never played anyone dead. That opens the doors to your imagination and limitless creativity.

I found inspiration in strange places. I read a lot about liminal space and spoke to people who were existing within liminal spaces in their lives. I was also trying to find a key into the character. I went to the opera to see Tristan und Isolde just to be engulfed by the music and to have a different sensory experience. I realized that [composer] Bernard Herrmann had based the theme tune of Vertigo—a Hitchcock film that I was obsessed with at the time, and its idea of a woman coming back from the dead—on Tristan und Isolde.

That sent chills up my spine because I’d found a way into the character. Although very different from the storyline in Wednesday, essentially Tristan und Isolde is about a transcendent love. It was fascinating to me, and it gave me a different approach to find this new iteration of Larissa Weems.

In season 1, I was figuring out who this character was in a space of reality. Tim was very generous in how he allowed me to have creative input. Coming back this season, there are limited moments of connection. I’m playing a character who can barely exist. Her only purpose is to desperately try to bring about positive change in Wednesday, who doesn’t want it. It’s an excruciating place for Weems to be.

But once a character has died, they can’t come back and be exactly the same. So Principal Weems is a little different this season. When you have a new lease on life, you can use your humor more, you find things more playful, more emotional, more affecting. You might find that a lot of painful home truths have to be faced. It was a wonderfully creative and challenging experience, and I relished it.

Weems has absolutely no authority whatsoever. She can only be present and suggest, perhaps even threaten, in an attempt to get through to Wednesday. That causes her a huge amount of pain as she watches Wednesday, who is the architect of her own demise. But Weems realizes that at least her relationship with Wednesday was always honest.

I adore working with Jenna. She’s so masterful in this part and really knows her own mind. She’s well-educated on the show, and she has a clear vision for it. What I love is that in scenes, you can trust each other so that you can push each other further, knowing there’s always love. That’s when interesting things start to happen. When you feel held by the other person and when there is mutual respect, you can test the limits of the relationship.

Those two have an odd relationship. Weems hasn’t been a mother to anybody, and Wednesday already has a mother. They’re not quite friends, but they are somehow bonded wordlessly. It’s a beautiful thing to play on screen.

Tim treated me with great respect and told me that I had good ideas, I was beautiful, and I could do whatever I wanted. He trusted me. I was able to truly create a character, which gave me the confidence to be a stronger performer who is more in charge of not just my image, but my performance. I feel like he’s liberated me. [Costume designer] Colleen Atwood, similarly, generated the most extraordinary designs that worked perfectly with my body and added another layer to the character.

She had a lifelong dedication to that institution. Her attitude was informed by equality, tolerance, and being progressive. She wanted to marry that with commercial success for the school, for it to have a wealth of resources. It was all about integrating into society and celebrating differences while recognizing similarities in others.

Even in death, Weems is still living for the school. It brings her enormous pain to see this institution that she’s brought up—because she truly cares about the students and wants to see them flourish—being used inappropriately and without an altruistic sense of pure moral good.

I cannot utter a word about Lady Gaga’s involvement in the project. But I think she is a magnificent addition to the family.

This season is extraordinarily inventive. So much happens. It takes you to more lavish, outlandish, and emotional places than you can expect. It just leaves you wanting more.

Grief is to be endured. If we can do something creative with it, it can be a testament to the amount of love that we have for those people. It can allow you, in your own small way, to present a gift to their lives and to honor them. I feel it’s brought a fragility to the role, and I’m grateful to have had a creative process that let me honor the love of these magnificent people.

I’m interested in the full spectrum of what it means to be human. As I move through life, that changes. I become different, and I have different experiences. I want to bring those to the parts that I play.

For a long time, certainly in our mainstream film and television space, we received representations of women that were often one-dimensional. So I like to look at opposing forces within things. That’s what makes us human—the inconsistencies, the flaws, the complexities, and all those things that we can’t make sense of, but just are. I try to find that in every character I play.

I am overwhelmed with gratitude to everyone on Severance and to Ben [Stiller] for developing a character for me. I was a huge fan of the show during season 1. It has true intelligence and a dazzling originality that rips through it. I’d like to see everybody on the show celebrated—the actors, the writers, the creators, all of the directors.

It is so meaningful to be nominated for this Emmy because I’m not a conventional choice, and I haven’t been for a long time. I was given such a huge amount of love on that show, and I really did not expect to be nominated. I hoped to be; I have worked very hard and put a lot of my heart and soul into it, but I certainly did not expect it. That gives me the courage to keep pushing myself as a performer and an artist and to believe that there is a part for me.

When I finished Game of Thrones, I didn’t want to do combat again because I wanted to play a wide range of parts, though I adored playing Brienne of Tarth. But when Ben Stiller shows you a scene like that—it’s so immaculate, rich, dynamic, and fearsome. I went about it with gusto. I went back to the gym and did these two-hour training sessions to rebuild my stamina.

I was determined to be back and deliver that fight scene in a way I hadn’t done before. This was a different character with a different kind of rawness and a real violence to her. Brienne was a very honorable character. She didn’t want to do what she did, but she would deliver. But Lorne is in a state of carnage. She nearly kills someone, but is reminded of her humanity by Mark S. And, I have to say, one of my special gifts in life has been to work with Adam Scott. Every single moment is a delight because he’s such a phenomenal actor.

I loved doing that fight scene. I never envisaged it, but I thoroughly enjoyed spitting blood across the wall again.

There’s something fabulous about a woman taking control. She is in corporate binds, and she has had enough of her oppressor—she wants to fight for that goat!

I’m happy to share not a single breath about the projects, but what bliss to potentially exist in those worlds.

Oh, modeling. Well, it’s no secret how much I love working with the creatives in the fashion industry as well as acting. Maison Margiela is a designer that I’ve admired for most of my adult life, as is John Galliano. I’ve wanted to work with John for 30 years. I never, ever thought that I would. He gave me an exquisite moment of rebirth, and from it, I feel truly changed in the best way I could ever hope. So, yes, I would love to do more.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.