As Deadline revealed exclusively on Monday, Netflix‘s hit series Wednesday will be moving locations, with the upcoming second season filming in Ireland.
While attending the Season 5 premiere of FX’s Fargo, which he executive produces, Wednesday executive producer Steve Stark spoke to Deadline about the decision to relocate from Romania, where Season 1 was shot, to Ireland.
“Romania was an amazing place to shoot creatively, but challenging in a lot of ways,” he said.
As Deadline reported, the Balkan country presented logistical challenges, with speculation starting soon after production had wrapped that, if the series would go to a second season, it would likely film elsewhere.
Stark confirmed that by the time they’d finished Season 1, ” we were going to movie it out to there.”
“London or Ireland were two choices,” he revealed. “The main reason for me was I shot 113 episodes of Vikings in Ireland. Love Ireland. We got an amazing deal at the same studio we shot Vikings in. Vikings is probably ending, so we moved back in there.”
Stark serves as executive producer on the MGM Television-produced Wednesday, Fargo and Vikings: Valhalla after serving as President of the studio (now owned by Amazon) for almost a decade.
The mothership Vikings series, the first big TV project to come out of MGM post-bankruptcy, was filmed at Morgan O’Sullivan’s then-newly build Ashford Studios in Ireland for its six-season run on History. It was succeeded by sequel Valhalla, which will be ending with its upcoming third season on Netflix and. That show, in turn, will be replaced by Wednesday, which is expected to start production on Season 2 in late April.
Little is known about about where Wednesday would go creatively in Season 2. Showrunners Al Gough and Miles Millar have hinted that we might see more Addams family members and explore further Wednesday’s (Jenna Ortega) relationship with her mother while Ortega, who is becoming a producer for Season 2, has indicated that the show would have stronger emphasize on horror over teen romance.
Stark was not more forthcoming but teased that “there will be a lot of surprises” in Season 2.
On the red carpet for Fargo, Stark also spoke about the upcoming fifth season of the FX series set in present day.
“I think the show has worked for a couple of reasons; it mixes the comedy and the tragedy — Minnesota nice against really bad things,” he said. “We’re living in a world of power and greed which is so prevalent, and the corruption of power and greed that brings people down. It’s sort of a morality play.”
Season 5 centers on “this woman caught between two incredible forces—a mother-in-law and a sheriff,” he added. “How is she going to get out of that fight? Her spunk, her cleverness, her ability to get through this impossible situation. There’s hope that maybe there’s an ability to bring down that corruption, power and greed.”
Does Stark think there’s another season of Fargo beyond the upcoming one? “I do. We’ve covered every decade except the ’60s and the ’90s. So maybe the 60s and 90s,” he said.
