logo
'It was wonderful': Jenna Ortega on filming Wednesday in Ireland

'It was wonderful': Jenna Ortega on filming Wednesday in Ireland

Irish Examiner5 days ago
Jenna Ortega has praised the kindness of the Irish people and the beauty of the landscape after filming the second season of the Netflix hit Wednesday in the country.
The 22-year-old American actress, who reprises her role as Wednesday Addams, the morbid, sharp-witted teenager with psychic powers, said she had never visited the island before working on the new season.
The new season sees Wednesday return to the halls of Nevermore Academy, where fresh foes and woes await.
Directed once again by Tim Burton, the latest instalment of the gothic hit welcomes a number of new cast members to the team including Joanna Lumley as Grandmama, Steve Buscemi as Barry Dort, the new principal of Nevermore, and Billie Piper as Isadora Capri, the school's new head of music.
Director Tim Burton with Wednesday star Jenna Ortega (Ian West/PA)
While the first season was filmed in Romania, the latest instalment of the popular series was shot in various locations around Wicklow, Dublin and Offaly.
'I'd never been to Ireland and it was wonderful,' said Ortega.
'My favourite thing was just how kind the people are, but also the countryside was really nice. I did my best to see as much of the island as I could while I was there. I went north, south, east, west, I went all over. I'm pretty proud of myself.'
According to Tourism Ireland, some of the locations used to shoot the new series include Charleville Castle in Co Offaly, Dean's Grange Cemetery in Co Dublin and Ashford Studios in Co Wicklow.
Lumley, 79, said: 'I was pretty thrilled, because having filmed there a few times, in Ardmore studios, I didn't know there was a studio even further south of that, and then to come to Ashford Studios was marvellous.
'There's something in Ireland which is slightly otherworldly and it embraced the whole feeling of Wednesday.'
Dame Joanna Lumley is joining the cast of Wednesday for its second season (James Manning/PA)
Buscemi, 67, famous for his roles in Reservoir Dogs and The Sopranos, said he enjoyed the Guinness.
'I was surprised at how much Guinness I could actually drink every day, never while shooting,' he joked.
'It was so lovely shooting there. The people are amazing.'
Ortega added: 'Everything about Ireland was so beautiful and we had such a hard-working crew, and people who really just gave it their all, and were so skilled.
'But the only real challenge we had was fighting the green. It was so green there and it was so bright for the show. Suddenly the Addams looked alive.'
Wednesday season two, which sees Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones continuing to play Morticia Addams, comes out on Netflix on August 6 with a first part and a second part coming on September 3.
Created by cartoonist Charles Addams, the macabre family have inspired a 1960s TV show, and 1990s films starring Anjelica Huston and Christina Ricci, who also appeared in Wednesday season one as a teacher.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Building traditions as Rekindle Festival returns to Ennistymon
Building traditions as Rekindle Festival returns to Ennistymon

Agriland

time2 hours ago

  • Agriland

Building traditions as Rekindle Festival returns to Ennistymon

Ennistymon's Rekindle Festival will return for its fourth year with a celebration of tradition, community and creativity on Friday, August 15, and Saturday, August 16 as part of National Heritage Week. Organised by Common Knowledge - which shares skills through hands-on courses in areas such as building, growing, making, and mending - Clare's Rekindle Festival invites people to reconnect with craft, music, food, and one another. Local and global voices take part in a shared celebration of heritage and living tradition. Centred around traditional skills and community knowledge, the 2025 festival programme includes: live music; food; craft workshops; storytelling; and thoughtful conversations. Rekindle opens with Lasraí, an evening of live performance and shared experience under the Burren sky. This year's concert features master uilleann piper, Paddy Keenan; dancer and organiser, Edwina Guckian; Irish-Palestinian singer, Róisín El Cherif; and surprise guest artists from across the country. The aim is to create a space where stories, rhythms and roots ignite. The Rekindle festival day in Ennistymon town centre on Saturday comprises a full day of free public events spread across the town, bringing streets and shopfronts to life in the festival hub at Courthouse Gallery from 2:00p.m to 4:00p.m. The programme includes 'Meet the Makers' craft demos; traditional music sessions; a heritage market and an outdoor céilí with Louise O'Connor and the Rekindle band. There will also be talks on traditional farm methods including Irish scything for regenerative methods of managing the land. A Rekindle trail from 10:00a.m to 8:00p.m will incorporate a town-wide trail of pop-up events, skill-sharing and heritage installations that reflect the culture and creativity of north Co. Clare. A relaxed gathering of music, story, and reflection to end the festival day will take place in Cooley's pub at 6:00p.m. New this year is 'Spreag', which aims to inspire community action through traditional skills. Eco-builder, Harrison Gardner, and blacksmith, Reece Foster, will speak on how craft can support local resilience and climate action. People can explore how traditional arts can build stronger rural communities through shared movement and story in a workshop with Edwina Guckian. The 'Land and Lore' artisan food market will showcase local food rooted in place and practice, featuring producers, foragers, fermenters, and bakers from north Co. Clare. Festival producer, Aoife Hammond, said that Rekindle is about remembering and reigniting. Hammond said: "We honour the past by actively shaping the present through music, food, movement and making." "Rekindle Festival is where heritage meets hands‑on practice. "Watching regenerative farming demonstrations and heritage keepers speak about soil health, seed saving and biodiversity reminds me that traditional land‑wise farming isn't just about crop yield. "It's about preserving wisdom, nurturing community, and growing resilient systems for the future," she said. Tickets and further information are available through Common Knowledge's social platforms.

Summer of music in full flow as 30,000 revellers make pilgrimage to All Together Now 2025
Summer of music in full flow as 30,000 revellers make pilgrimage to All Together Now 2025

Sunday World

time3 hours ago

  • Sunday World

Summer of music in full flow as 30,000 revellers make pilgrimage to All Together Now 2025

It all comes together at Waterford Festival Recently crowned Ireland's Music Festival of the Year, the sixth annual event at Curraghmore Estate in Co Waterford sold out months in advance thanks to a stacked roster of musicians, DJs, comedians, artists, and even chefs. Summer An estimated 30,000 revellers have made their pilgrimage to the Déise since gates officially opened on Thursday afternoon — and it's easy to see why All Together Now is a summer staple for people all around the country. Shauna Lindsay and pals arrive in style The fun kicked off early on Thursday evening with some live sets to get the party started before most attendees arrived on site on Friday in a sea of Doc Martens and cowboy hats. With more than 20 stages to visit and over 400 performers to catch this year, it's a labyrinth of immersive experiences, but it's clear that Irish talent is the festival's keystone. Friday night saw Grammy nominees Fontaines D.C. draw thousands to the main stage fresh from their acclaimed Glastonbury performance last month. Their explosive set featured hits from their 2024 album Romance — highlights include encore songs In The Modern World and Starbuster — as well as older tunes from earlier albums Skinty Fia and Dogrel. And on Saturday evening, CMAT made her grand return to All Together Now after playing the festival in 2022. Like Fontaines D.C., she also played Glastonbury and Primavera in recent weeks on her festival tour, so was pretty warmed up by the time she hit the stage in Waterford. The 29-year-old pulled out all the stops for the droves of fans, belting out her latest single Euro-Country and teasing her upcoming album of the same name. We've also seen a stellar billing at the Jameson Connects: The Circle Stage, with dozens of artists from the Emerald Isle and beyond stepping out to showcase their talents at their captivating stage nestled beneath a canopy of trees. Music fans Donal and Meghan McDonald The energy has been infectious there across the weekend thanks to the likes of Birmingham-based rapper Kofi Stone and Belfast punk band Enola Gay, while Galwegian DJ Shampain kept the vibes going after hours with some ambient electronic tracks. But before the curtain closes on another year, we still get to hear from dancehall icon Sister Nancy, who was also recently revealed as this year's surprise secret guest at The Circle stage. She joins a stacked Sunday line-up featuring standout sets from Maria Somerville, David Holmes, Sloucho, and Curtisy. In between the jam-packed schedule of exciting musicians, there's been ample opportunity to get some R&R in the form of sauna yurt and hot tub experiences to yoga classes and meditation sessions. Survival However, most people appear to have opted for the fuss-free festival survival method of knocking back a Dioralyte and slouching back into their camp chairs as they get pumped for the final night of All Together Now 2025. And to top things off, Canadian superstar Nelly Furtado — ready to rock another Irish festival after an unforgettable set at Forbidden Fruit last summer — is bound to be one of the most memorable performances of the weekend. Here's hoping the rain stays off when she graces us with chart-topping hits Maneater and Promiscuous because the ponchos have (thankfully) been banished to the bottom of rucksacks so far. Music fans Michelle Connaughton and Lisa Coghlan News in 90 Seconds - Sunday, August 3rd

Live, Forever: Why bands are reuniting early and often
Live, Forever: Why bands are reuniting early and often

RTÉ News​

time3 hours ago

  • RTÉ News​

Live, Forever: Why bands are reuniting early and often

It's less than two weeks until the Gallagher brothers take to the Croke Park stage as part of the Irish leg of their long-awaited reunion tour – but they're not the only ones on the comeback trail. In the past three years alone we've had Pulp and Blur reunite, as well as Sugababes, JLS, S Club, Blink 182, Busted, My Chemical Romance and Five – which have two shows coming up in the 3Arena later this year. Obviously, reunion tours are nothing new – they've been a feature of the live music scene in one way or another for decades. But the nature – and frequency – of the reunion gig has changed dramatically in a short space of time. In the past a group might have hit the road again as a last hurrah – looking to take the opportunity to pad out the pension fund while they were still able to manage a gruelling tour schedule. And they were less common, too, or incomplete due to band members opting out or passing away before they reached 'farewell tour' age. Nowadays, though, groups seem to be reuniting at a much earlier age. And, far from being seen as a cynical cash-grab, audiences are crying out for a chance to see these comeback kids. Why is this happening? It goes without saying that the artists are, first and foremost, getting back together for the love of the music… their art is what motivates them more than anything else. But it's not being too cynical to point out that there's also an often significant financial incentive to them hitting the road at an earlier stage in their band history. To better explain that, it's worth going back a few decades – and looking at how bands and musicians would have made their money in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Back then making money in the industry was really all about the physical music – single and album sales where what you were trying to drum up. The tour was maybe an add-on – but it wasn't the main event. In fact some cases artists would have made little or no money from their tour, but did so because gigging was a good way to drum up physical sales. The beauty in this model was that, even if you were a band who fizzled out after the first few albums – or gave up touring altogether, you would probably continue to enjoy decent revenues from sales well in to the future. Because you would have new generations of audiences finding your albums years later, And if you needed to boost your bank balance a little you could always push out a special edition, or a 10th or 20th anniversary collectable with a crappy demo bonus track added on, which would sell well on reputation alone. But of course that's all changed now thanks to streaming. Most people don't spend very much money on physical music nowadays. And of the money they do spend on accessing recorded music, very little of it makes its way to the artists. Even acts that are drumming up millions of streams are getting really paltry sums of money from Spotify and Apple Music. That means that touring – as well as merchandise - is now where you go if you want to have any hope of making money as an artist. A report by the Irish Music Rights Organisation last month said that the music industry contributes €1 billion to the Irish economy each year - and €786m of that comes from live events (though it's worth nothing that that spend would include what gig-goers drop on travel, accommodation, food and drink and possibly merch too). The report said consumers spend an average of 1,000 a year on music – and €757 of that goes towards live music. So you can take from that that the vast majority of money that's up for grabs for artists is available to them on the road. And people having money to spend is an important factor in all of this. Because the people who were listening to Five or the Sugababes or My Chemical Romance as tweens and teens are now maybe in their 30s – and there's a good chance they have a bit more disposable income now than they did the first time around. They will be far more willing, and able, to spend a few hundred euro on gigs each year. That means the acts that were popular with young people in the 1990s and 2000s have an opportunity to cash in on that fanbase in a way that wasn't possible when they were at the peak of their popularity. It's suddenly much easier for them to convince their fans to pay through the nose for concert tickets, and still pay €50 for a t-shirt or a poster while they're there. So in a lot of ways the economics of music have been flipped – bands used to tour to promote an album, now they might put out an album to drum up hype for a tour. Although in a lot of cases these reunited bands don't even put new music out... True; and Oasis is the perfect example of that. There's been absolutely no suggestion that they're going to go back into the studio, and it's fair to say that the fans don't care about that. All they want is for the band to finish the tour that they've announced – and ideally add a few more dates on down the line. Now maybe that's because the latter part of Oasis' back catalogue wasn't exactly their best work (those who disagree just need to look at the setlist for the reunion tour to see that Noel and Liam feel the same). However the fact that there's little demand for new music also points to some of the other reasons why these kinds of reunion tours are in such strong demand at the moment. Specifically in the case of Oasis, there's obviously a supply and demand factor. People haven't been able to see them play live together in at least 16 years, so there's a massive pent up demand. Had they stayed on good terms through the years and done a tour every year or two, they might not have seen such a clamour for tickets this time around. That being said, acts like Five, Pulp and Blur have done reunion tours before and are still seeing demand this time around - so having a keen audience is not just about laying low for a few years and then coming back. So what's creating such strong demand for these reunions? The pandemic can take part of the blame – it really super-charged people's FOMO, because people missed out really on a couple of years of gig-going. And now they want to make up for lost time, and mark some acts off their bucket lists. Perhaps another factor is the fact that we're living in a more nostalgic time than has ever been the case before – in part because streaming TV and music has put so much older content at our fingertips. Our smartphones are also, constantly generating photo albums of things we did just a few years ago – which encourages us to get wistful about our younger days which – in turn – makes us pine for the music we listened to at the time. At the same time that instant access to older content has made it much easier for younger people to discover and create a love for music that they were maybe a little bit too young for the first time around. There will no doubt be plenty of people in their late teens and early 20s at the Oasis concerts this month – alongside those who were grown-ups when they first heard Wonderwall. (In fact the demand for tickets from newer fans did spark a brief, nasty debate online which saw some older fans argue that they deserved tickets more than the newcomers (and, particularly, the younger women who wanted to go). So just how lucrative are these kinds of reunion tours? Well it obviously all depends – and there are a lot of factors at play. But it's likely that Oasis will be behind the year's biggest reunion, in financial terms if nothing else. It's estimated that they could be looking at revenues of more than €460m for their current tour – even assuming it is not extended beyond its current 41 date run. Now that is revenue for the whole tour –from that they'll need to cover a lot of costs including venue hire, staging, crewing, transport and so on. However it seems as though there will still be plenty left for the talent when all the bills are covered. The reports are that each of the Gallagher brothers could be walking away with upwards of €50m each – with even more potential income from merch and the inevitable boost to album sales/streams. For other bands it's probably not quite as lucrative – but all the same you'd imagine they could be building up a decent sum of money for themselves To take the example of Five– while they're not playing the same sized venues as Oasis, they are doing 25 nights in venues that are in the 10,000 to 15,000 seater range. Many of those nights are already sold out – or close to being sold out. So even if it's not tens of millions each, you would imagine there is a significant amount of money being generated for the group from their tour.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store