Since the second series of the hit Netflix show Wednesday landed last week, it has held the top slot in the top 10 series category.
The show, filmed at locations across Ireland, is a spin-off of The Addams Family franchise directed by Tim Burton. When Season One premiered in 2023, it quickly became Netflix’s most popular English-language TV series to date.
It focuses on the family’s daughter, Wednesday, played by American actor Jenna Ortega, best known for the Scream movie franchise. Catherine Zeta-Jones, pop-star Lady Gaga, Billie Piper, Luis Guzman and Joanna Lumley also feature in this season of Wednesday.
A fun attraction for the Irish audience is spotting the many Irish locations in which the series was filmed, including Powerscourt Demesne in Enniskerry which viewers might recognise from the TV series Vikings and the Disney film Disenchanted which was also filmed on its grounds.
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Powerscourt
In Wednesday, Powerscourt’s gardens were primarily used as a backdrop for the title character’s school, Nevermore Academy. Powerscourt is home to Ireland’s tallest waterfall, which can be seen in episode three of the series when Wednesday and her fellow classmates take a trip to Camp Jericho.
Charleville Castle
The gothic Charleville Castle in Tullamore, Co Offaly, features in Wednesday too. It was also used as a location for filming the popular period TV dramas Reign and The Tudors. In Wednesday the castle’s interiors serve as the dormitories and classrooms of Nevermore Academy.
Deansgrange Cemetery
Deansgrange Cemetery in south Co Dublin, home to more than 150,000 graves, was also used as a backdrop for the series. It is the final resting place for many prominent Irish people such as Sinéad O’Connor and former taoiseach Seán Lemass.
Trinity College
Providing a more modern backdrop (despite its 400-year history) the business school at Trinity College Dublin in the city centre was cleverly transformed to resemble Newark Airport in the US, serving New York City. In recent years, Trinity was perhaps most famously the backdrop to the hit TV series Normal People, and more recently the college’s Museum Building was used as a stand-in for the Natural History Museum in London in the Paramount+ series The Doll Factory.
Clonliffe College
On Dublin’s north side, Clonliffe College in Drumcondra, a former seminary, features in Wednesday as the fictional Willow Hill Psychiatric Facility where the show’s villain Tyler Galpin, played by Hunter Doohan, is being held.
Cloragh Woods
The production also built a miniature version of the exterior of Wednesday’s mother’s house, Rotwood Cottage, in Cloragh Woods, Co Wicklow. Though the house’s interior scenes were filmed in Ashford Studios, Co Wicklow.
A modern housing development in Newcastle, Co Wicklow, is where Wednesday encounters the serial killer Chet LaTroy, played by American actor Hayley Joel Osment.
The red-bricked 18th century manor, Clermont House, also in Co Wicklow, was used for a variety of different scenes, including as a shack where Wednesday’s younger brother Pugsley holds a zombie called Slurp, as a hospital and as the location for one of the Sheriff’s press conferences.
While Wednesday’s first season was filmed in locations across Romania, the show’s executive producer, Miles Millar, told RTÉ that, “coming to Ireland to shoot season two felt like a homecoming – we have beautiful castles, we have the lush greens”.
A March 2025 Tourism Ireland research report found that 24 per cent of overseas audiences use films and TV as a source for travel inspiration. Tourism Ireland was keen to capitalise on Wednesday’s decision to shoot the second season here, and used behind-the-scenes access to the set to create two short films giving fans a glimpse of how and where the series was made.
[ Joanna Lumley: ‘I love Ireland as much as you can if you’re not an Irish person’Opens in new window ]
Millar and his colleague and fellow executive producer Alfred Gough told Tourism Ireland that filming in Ireland brought “a sense of timeless beauty, wonder and epic spectacle to the world of Wednesday. It’s no coincidence that Dracula author Bram Stoker hailed from Dublin, and his stories were inspired by Irish folklore”.
Gough added that: “Wednesday, season one, was a table setter, but there’s still so much of the world left to see. It’s been exciting to expand the scope and the vision of the show this season”.
