Spoilers ahead for season two of Wednesday.

Like a Russian nesting doll, Owen Painter was tasked with shedding a new layer in every episode of Wednesday season two. He’s introduced in an old ghost story — “The Tale of the Skull Tree,” rendered in Tim Burton’s signature stop-motion animation — told to Pugsley Addams (Isaac Ordonez) and his dormmates by their RA. The fable of a gifted Nevermore student driven to madness and death by his ambition is meant to serve as a warning, but when Pugsley sneaks off to the Skull Tree to investigate whether it’s true, he literally sparks the dead boy back to life. That’s when we get our first look at Painter: a mindless, almost fleshless zombie clawing up from the grave. Pugsley lovingly dubs him Slurp, and over the course of eight episodes, Slurp consumes lots of “gnarly” brains, including the one belonging to Christopher Lloyd’s professor Orloff, in order to return to his original form.

It’s quite an effort, and one so physically impressive that Painter’s audition mostly involved improvising movements on the spot. “I was told to act out ‘You’ve been sitting for a thousand years and your voice box doesn’t work, and water’s going to fix that, so you should have a glass of water across the room, but some stuff is in your way,’” he says. “I had so much fun messing around with that and coming up with physical gags and jokes.”

In part two of season two, which premiered on Netflix on September 3, Isaac finds his way back to his dying sister, Francoise (Frances O’Connor), and her son — none other than Wednesday’s murderous ex, Tyler Galpin — and the trio concocts a plan to save Francoise’s life and get revenge on the Addams family. Morticia and Gomez, it turns out, were the Night siblings’ classmates, and Morticia murdered Isaac to save Gomez from Isaac’s first attempt at healing Francoise. As the ancillary villains of the season (sorry, Heather Matarazzo and Steve Buscemi) drop like flies, Isaac becomes the last one standing, drawing the whole Addams clan to Nevermore’s Iago Tower in order to drain Pugsley of his spark powers. There, we’re given the final reveal of the Slurp-Isaac nesting doll: The beloved Addams family companion, Thing (performed by Victor Dorobantu), comes from Night’s right arm. Almost poetically, the mad scientist could meet his end only by his own hand.

How much were you told in the beginning about your character?
Nothing. It was dummy sides and a code name. I kind of guessed what would happen because the code name for the character was Karloff, which made me think of Boris Karloff, so I prepared Frankenstein- and Dracula-type movements and characterization, and then when I got to Dublin, we were kind of working on the fly to come up with something new.

This season had a couple of red-herring villains. When did you find out your character would be the Addamses’ most formidable foe?
I had a meeting with Alfred and Miles, the Wednesday showrunners, when I first got to Dublin. I’d been wondering about the character for a couple months before that, and they sat me down and gave me a general arc of the season. They told me that I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone in the cast, which was so strange. They all found out through the rumor mill, but we’d all be looking at each other out at bars thinking, How can we talk about this? It was very secretive.

I was watching a making-of video and they were talking about how Tim Burton was very specific with how he wanted the Isaac puppet to look. How much of that translated into his description of the character to you?
We had a lot of conversations around Slurp. We worked for a couple months on that, and working with him on character design is the most amazing process. We would do these sessions where they would apply a new prosthetic idea on me, and it would be a couple hours of gluing and working in the mirror because I’m trying to figure out how I can control the jaw plate on the suit, and then Tim comes in and he has this pad with him and he’ll sketch out something so fast, and it’s the next little detail in the design and it completely changes it. At one point, I remember we were testing skin color in this cartoonish blue, adding more and more to it, and it totally changed the feel of him. And then for Isaac, by that point, I felt so much more familiar and comfortable with Tim’s sensibilities and tone, so I was trying to make choices to serve the world. I really wanted to play with the Dr. Frankenstein element — this really heightened silent-movie acting.

Was there anything specifically that you feel like you drew from any portrayal of Frankenstein?
Weirdly, I took a lot. It feels a little funny, because you point to a performance that’s so iconic, and then it’s just what you did. But the person in my mind the most was Klaus Kinski. He is a German actor who worked with Werner Herzog a bunch, and he’s a lunatic. He delivered some of the most gorgeous performances ever. I think he had so much energy in his body. It feels like there’s a current going through his limbs all the time. So I was trying to steal a little bit of that.

Speaking of crazy energy, how surreal was it to eat Christopher Lloyd’s brain?
I couldn’t believe it. And sadly, he couldn’t be there on the day, so I was bullying a robot all day.

Are you working with a prop head?
Yeah, there was a prop head, but the mechanical bot was there and controlled by people on the crew. I don’t think a lot of it’s in the actual episode, but we had so much fun shoving the robot around. It’s almost kind of tragic. The wheels start squeaking and it feels like it’s a puppy dog. But I adore Christopher Lloyd, so even to just visualize working with him was pretty crazy. Maybe it’s for the best that we weren’t in the same room. I probably would’ve been too nervous.

What exactly are you eating there?
Some Jell-O blood mixture, and you’re dunking your face into the glass. It just tastes like sugar, kind of gnarly.

One of the major reveals of the finale is that Thing is your right hand. How do you thread all these versions of the character into one performance?
I didn’t think about it that much until closer to the end. I was struggling to get through a moment and I was in the chair with Frances O’Connor, and she was like, “Well, you have a lot of balls in the air. There’s a lot of physical elements to do right now, so just focus on those.” She said it much more eloquently than that, but that was the first time I even realized. I was also really helped by the costume department. I’d settled on a hand position to hold for the season, and then we set up this kind of rig using a carpal-tunnel wrist bracer that could hold it in place. Then you’re spending eight months doing that, and it becomes kind of automatic.

Do you find yourself still holding that position?
Yeah, in my nightmares.

Thing has always been an integral part of the Addams family, but he’s never had a backstory. How does it feel to be the person who fills in that narrative space?
I did feel a tremendous amount of pressure when I arrived and heard that. I got to talk with Victor about the structure of the hand. I showed up on one of the first days where I was acting out having Thing on me, and he came over saying, “No, it’s all wrong. It’s all wrong!” He’s giving me these adjustments, and they’re brilliant. He’s so great at what he does. I was having a blast with that little secret to myself. There was a period of time in prep for the eighth episode where I was walking around the streets of Dublin mock beating myself up, giving myself wet willies and things like that.

Tell me about learning the choreography for that fight between Isaac and Thing.
Because of all of that wandering around and looking stupid, I came up with a sheet of funny jokes that I thought could be in the choreography, and then I had some sessions with the stunt team. They’re so knowledgeable about the athletics of everything. I would be able to bring creative ideas to them, and they would help me fine-tune the movements. We turned the sheet of jokes into a string of choreography that we pitched to Tim. Tim was like, “Let’s just wing it. Let’s do something else. Let’s throw in something new.” So a lot of it is off the cuff in a really fun way. At one point, I showed up for a day and they just handed me the camera for POV footage. I’m holding a GoPro while I’m punching myself in the face. That was like the best day of work ever.

Tell me about Isaac’s relationship with Francoise. Your characters are really close, almost questionably so. Was there any backstory you and Francis filled in?
It kind of just happened. We kept finding it increasingly funny.

Did you two feel like you were playing up that dynamic?
I think so. We didn’t talk about it. Our relationship kept feeling right — as wrong as it is. I loved working with her. She was having a blast with her character. Those are a lot of my favorite days, working with her and Hunter, the king of breaking.

Was there a specific moment that really had him break?
Well, I kept forgetting that I had funny teeth in, and so in my mind, there’s a very sweet moment and a very sweet smile happening. And then I would lock eyes with Hunter and see he’s trying so hard not to laugh because of this creature staring at him.

I love how annoyed Isaac gets when Tyler is around him and Francoise.
It’s been fun really grossing Tyler out and developing that sibling rivalry. The familial dynamics got to be everything at once because of the nature of their relationship and also the tone of the show. I was able to oscillate between parenting Tyler like I was his stepdad and bickering with him like I’m his little brother, and both things are true. The same goes for the relationship with Frances.

It’s like, yes, Wednesday appeals to kids, but it’s also pulling from gothic works where things get weird.
I want to enrich that as much as possible. I don’t subscribe to the idea that kids are to be talked down to. Obviously don’t go throwing on Game of Thrones for a 9-year-old, but in terms of something like this, there’s a lot of room for layering.

I know you can’t speak to whether you’ll be back for season three, and you are dead, but on Wednesday, anything goes. You’ve already done so many character turns here, so do you want to take this opportunity to reveal that you’re Ophelia, too?
I can’t speak to that one. You never know, right? But that’s above my pay grade, certainly.

 “Our relationship kept feeling right — as wrong as it is.”