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In The Scenario, reporter Kirbie Johnson takes readers behind the scenes of the buzziest movies and TV shows to reveal how the best wigs, special effects makeup, and more are created. For this edition, Johnson spoke with the hair and makeup team of Wednesday’s second season, including hair designer Francesco Pegoretti, makeup designer Lynn Johnston, Jenna Ortega’s personal makeup artist and hairstylist, Nirvana Jalalvand, as well as wardrobe designers Colleen Atwood and Mark Sutherland.
Our favorite RBF-outfitted terror is back. Season two of Wednesday sees the show’s distinguished crew of outcasts back at Nevermore Academy after a short summer break, which is why you didn’t see any major changes to Wednesday Addams’s signature braided pigtails and moody makeup.
“I wasn't going to do anything dramatic,” says makeup artist and hairstylist Nirvana Jalalvand, who works with Jenna Ortega off and on set. She installed a few more wefts of extensions than she did last season to account for Ortega’s slightly shorter natural hair and changed her bangs a bit to open up the face, but neither of those changes were “particularly reflective of her character arc.”
Wednesday. Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams in episode 203 of Wednesday. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025COURTESY OF NETFLIX
That’s the general theme for all of the characters in season two. Most of the hair and makeup didn’t aim to “tell a story,” rather, it was inspired by whatever the artists felt was right—but that certainly doesn’t mean the season is lacking in big beauty moments.
Wednesday's graphic gala look
We know Wednesday could not care less about fancy parties, but nevertheless she always comes dressed for the occasion. Season one’s school dance, aka the Rave’N, provided the show’s most iconic scene—and look, for that matter. As head makeup and hair designer Tara McDonald shared with Allure, the milkmaid-style braids she wore back then were inspired by a photo of Alexa Chung, and a 2013 Chanel couture runway influenced the smoky black eye makeup. Fashion runways also provided much of the inspiration for the look Wednesday wore to this season’s gala, which included feathery eyeliner and, naturally, a braided updo.
For the hairstyle, Jalalvand says she took notes from Dior’s autumn/winter 2024 haute couture runway show, for which models wore pigtail braids woven together into what hairstylist Guido Palau described at the time as a “beaver tail.” Braids were an obvious choice, considering they’re kind of Wednesday’s whole thing, but the challenge was setting the look apart from her other hairstyles. “Obviously, with Wednesday, if you're going to do some sort of updo, it has to be braided in some way, but it needs to be different from what we did [in season one],” Jalalvand says. ““I tried to make it a little different [from the Dior reference] by adding a couple of braids that loop over her ears … a nice little Victorian reference, which lends itself nicely to Wednesday's interests.”
Jalalvand looked to '80s street goths to create the graphic eyeliner look that flicked out from underneath the feathered mask Wednesday wore. “They have all these hugely intense graphic liners,” she says. “[Jenna and I] looked at Siouxsie Sioux references and the graphic lines she created with her eye makeup and reigned it into a softer version.”
Jalalvand used Pat McGrath Labs products to create the look, including Legendary Wear Velvet Kohl Eyeliner, Perma Precision Liquid Eyeliner in Xtreme Black, IntensifEyes Longwear Primer, the Mothership Subliminal Eye Shadow Palette, and the translucent version of Skin Fetish: Sublime Perfection Blurring Under-Eye Powder, which was key. “I didn't put any concealer under Wednesday's eyes, because they're sort of meant to have that hollow look to them, but I used that powder all over her face,” Jalalvand says. “It gives this gorgeous, luminous blurring effect, [which] lends itself well to that powdered, ghostly vibe.”
And she didn’t forget Wednesday’s signature lip color, which remained the same from season one to season two: MAC Cosmetics lip liner in Nightmoth, a deep plum, topped with a little Paw Paw ointment. “I can't stray from that,” Jalalvand says. “It's just her lip color, so that never changes.”
Morticia's new signature lip
Photo: Courtesy of Netflix
In season one, Morticia wore a discontinued Tom Ford lipstick as her signature. Johnston reveals that for this season, however, the makeup team combined four products to create a new lip that’s softer and warmer than Hester’s and Wednesday’s. “Catherine knew what she wanted tonally,” Johnston says. “Herself and Dorothy Campbell, who did her makeup, tried a few different things until they got the exact shade they were looking for.”
The combination includes Bobbi Brown Lip Liner Pencil in Rum Raisin, a plum brown, Westman Atelier Lip Suede Matte Lipstick in Lou Lou, a wine red, MAC Cosmetics lip pencil in Chestnut, an intense brown, plus MAC Cosmetics Prep + Prime Lip Primer.
Hester Frump's big rebrand
Photo: Courtesy of Netflix
In season two, Hester Frump aka “Grandmama” became a favorite of Wednesday’s, and it’s clear to see why. “Hester's got a little bit of rock-and-roll in her,” costume designer Mark Sutherland says. That played a big part in determining her look.
“The idea was to create something different from the older versions of the grandmama,” Pegoretti says. Until now, Hester was perpetually portrayed as having minimal teeth, disheveled hair that made her look as though she’d been electrocuted, and no fashion sense whatsoever. This version of Hester, however, is “a woman in power, a woman in the business where [she’s] elegant, posh, and also very severe,” costume designer Colleen Atwood says. Her look was also deeply inspired by fashion icons—namely, the English socialite Daphne Guinness. “It’s a little bit Daphne, a little bit Bride of Frankenstein,” Atwood says. Hence, Hester’s chignon hairstyle, a subtler nod to the creepiness of the Addams family (if it reminds you of spiders, that’s because it was designed to).
Agnes DeMille's copycat wig
Photo: Courtesy of Netflix
One character that’s made a big impact in the fanbase is Agnes DeMille (played by Evie Templeton), a younger, invisible outcast student at Nevermore who is obsessed with Wednesday, hence her familiar braided pigtails. According to hair designer Francesco Pegoretti, her wig was the most difficult and most expensive wig to create.
It took “five or six days,” making it the most labor-intensive of the lot. Agnes has a center part that runs from her front hairline all the way to the back of the head, meaning Pegoretti had to emulate skin under the wig with a cap to make the wig look… well, less like a wig. It was made from real and very long red hair that was hand-knotted to the wig cap, accounting very precisely for those visible spots of scalp near the middle part. [Burton specifically requested the red hair color.]
What’s more, Templeton has thick, long blonde hair, which was a task for Pegoretti to prep for wig installation. “I was scared because the head wrap was not easy,” he says, referring to the process of wrapping around the head as close to the scalp as possible so that a wig can lie flat.
We asked, but despite the resemblance, Agnes was not inspired by the paintings in Big Eyes, one of Burton’s directorial projects—and no, her beautifully massive eyes were not enhanced with CGI. “Her eyes are just naturally really, really big, and they're ever so slightly emphasized with barely any—like a hair— of eyeliner on the top and a little tiny bit of mascara,” says makeup designer Lynn Johnston. “But there's very, very little makeup on her.”
That wasn’t the original plan for Agnes’s look, by the way. Johnston recalls testing out a few looks on Templeton that combined popular ‘60s techniques with Tim Burton’s signature spookiness with the help of makeup artist Lisa Eldridge. “When we put them on camera, we had to pull it back, just because with the other kids her age, she looked a little bit too old.”
