Wednesday, Netflix’s live-action take on how the Addams’ family’s only daughter would fare in the modern world, is a certified hit. (As if it ever could’ve been any other way.) The actors are experiencing explosive bursts of interest in their careers, and the show is already one of streaming platform’s most popular series ever.
The earliest plotline is simple: Wednesday Addams is erm..having a difficult time suffering bullies. So she’s sent to Nevermore Academy, Morticia’s alma mater and a school for the gifted.
Addams meets a host of literal characters, including her clairvoyant ancestor Goody Addams, her bubbly, fanged roommate, Enid, and her sometimes opponent, sometimes savior Bianca Barclay, a siren who’s disconcerted by Wednesday’s arrival. Of course, there are more faces (the multitude of would-be love interests, a seemingly kindhearted but malicious instructor, and a gross-looking pilgrim are a few), and the macabre central family to boot.
Bianca, played by Joy Sunday, doesn’t cower to Wednesday. She not interested in drooling over the teen’s dark quips and emotional unavailability, instead opting to question why she’s even at Nevermore.
We meet Sunday’s Bianca in a fencing classroom. Wednesday challenges her to a military-style match, with surrounding students not quite knowing if Barclay will scoff or take her peer on. She bests the pigtailed, ever-brooding girl, swiping her right above her left brow. It sets the tone for who Bianca Barclay is: skilled and fueled by (instead of fearful of) provocation.
Throughout the series, we learn more about Bianca, particularly the life experiences that shaped her. Best of all, we get to watch a layered Black girl be a queen bee and not apologize for it. If I had a siren song, I’d use it to grant Bianca a spinoff.
ESSENCE: Did you grow up watching The Addams Family?
Joy Sunday: Absolutely not. (laughs) I am Nigerian, and so there’s all this, I guess, avoidance of things that are spooky or supernatural. And so The Addams Family definitely fit into that. That’s not to say I didn’t try my hardest to sneak it in, so I definitely was familiar with them and very intrigued by them. And I always loved the humor of it, but I never got to sit down and watch it fully until probably high school or middle school.
When you did get to watch it for the first time, what was your perception of the show?
Well, I guess I didn’t watch the show as much as the movies. The movies were, as I said, just really dark and funny. It was kind of beautiful to see this family that really embraced all the darkness in each other. It made the scary stuff comfortable for me. Since then I’ve always been such a fan of horror and all its different subsets.
Why was it key to have a Black woman be prominent in Wednesday?
I think the beautiful thing about Bianca is that her and Wednesday butt heads because they see themselves in each other. I think it’s so beautiful to have such the titular character relate to a Black woman in that way. I think it also allows for the guard that people put up when they get around Black women who are too popular and who are significant, Bianca allows you to really see past that and to understand the insecurities and the softness that is behind somebody like that.
Do you think Wednesday was intimidated by Bianca?
I think they were both intimidated by each other. I mean, Wednesday certainly is a lot better at not showing it, but I think they’re teenage girls, and as I said, they’re both really, really good at what they do and have yet to meet somebody like the other. So naturally that would intimidate someone. I think as you get older, you get better at welcoming that person as opposed to being apprehensive. But I think both of them very quickly mature in seeing the other as they are.
Yeah. I think the scene when Bianca scores a point on Wednesday when they’re fencing military style, Wednesday, she’s kind of shaken up like, “Wow, I thought I had that one in the bag, and she got me.”
So tell me about how you landed the role.
Wow. So this is honestly one of my favorite audition stories, I mean, because I got the job, but also it really came together. It was actually months in the process because I like to believe the reason I got this job was because of a different audition that I did for the same casting director. It was another series regular role. I thought I smashed the audition, but then when I was looking back on my tapes, this was during the pandemic, I noticed that one of my scenes was blurry. But I didn’t have enough time to change it, so I just had to be like, “Ugh, it’s fine. It’s not that blurry, whatever.” I was so embarrassed.
Then months later, I get this audition from that same casting director and I said, “Oh my gosh, I have another chance to redeem myself.” And so it was a four page scene, but I worked on it with my friend for about an hour because I just wanted to get it perfect. And a couple days later I found out that I was pinned. Then a couple days after that, I found out that I would be testing. Within two weeks I was hired.
Awesome.
The audition, my test was over Zoom. It was Tim [Burton, the show’s director], a chemistry read with Jenna [Ortega, who plays Wednesday] and Percy [Hynes White, Xavier, Bianca’s ex] and the show runners were there as well, casting was there on Zoom.
I didn’t eat that morning. I was trying to do yoga, meditate, everything that I don’t usually do. ‘Cause it was so nerve-wracking. But also it’s Bianca, right? So I couldn’t be shaking during the audition, I really had to pull it together. I think it worked.
How did you prepare once you received word that you’d been chosen for the role?
I did a lot of anxiety Googling, including “How to be a series regular” and “What’s Romania like?” That was the basis, but I loved Bianca from the start and I loved crafting her.
I made a maybe I think four page look book, both for wardrobe, which didn’t end up being that varied. I mean, we had school uniforms, but just how Bianca feels and how she communicates, and the people that maybe she emulates herself after including… I mean, there was everyone on the PDF. I have to pull it up, but I know that Naomi Campbell was there, for example. So just a lot of these Black women who I’ve looked up to throughout the years.
I’d also love to hear more about Bianca’s look, particularly your hair, the makeup for the Rave’N, and the different sartorial choices.
So that look was inspired by, I believe, an Afropunk picture that I had found. I showed it to the makeup team, and they were gung-ho for it. We played around with different eyeshadow shades and the graphic liner as well. It was a painstaking process because we wanted to add pearls and to make it kind of sea-like. Every time that we had to do it, and we had to film that scene a couple of times over throughout different days. And so my makeup artist, Tia Costell, who I love so much, meticulously placed those pearls each time and measured it out and made sure it was perfect for each frame. She did such a wonderful job executing the look. I showed them the inspiration, but of course they jazzed it up and, yeah, that’s the Rave’N look.
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That’s such a significant night, because that’s the night that Xavier asks Bianca to help him forget about Wednesday. It’s one of the first times that we really see her be more vulnerable. So how did you bottle the emotion that was necessary to humanize her?
Well, I mean, it’s something that it’s familiar to me. I think the reason I relate so heavily to Bianca is because I too feel very… I’m very personable.I’m a people person. But I think that is because throughout the years I’ve had to adapt to many different environments that I wasn’t necessarily welcome in. And so you didn’t always know how to feel safe with the people that you were around. So I really tapped into that to be able to relate to Bianca, and it was easy to explore that hurt for sure.
I wanted to loop back to Bianca’s look, because your head is shaved in your personal life and Bianca’s is as well. Was that an intentional choice?
Well, I’ve had my head shaved for 10 years now, since I was in high school. So it’s always something that I thought I looked good with, but also it was a big budget show and I miss braids. I was like, “Ooh, I love braids.” But they liked my natural look. I think very quickly I decided, yes, it’s better.
They also really made sure to have a barber for me, Eph Onyegbule, he’s based in London. He was my barber for the first half, and then he had another barber come in to take care of me. So I always had someone, or for most of the time, I had someone who could do my hair, wave it up every morning, mousse it up, cut it, freshen it up, everything. So I was very well taken care of in that regard.
As someone who’s shaved their head before, I loved seeing a woman with their head shaved in this role. I think in our community, it’s come to symbolize strength and knowing yourself, but at the same time, it’s vulnerability. You can’t hide behind your hair. What you see is what you get. I really think that ties into the vulnerability we see Bianca come into a later in the season.
Of course. And it’s also almost an homage to where my family is from, because girls where my family is from, they often shave their heads for school. So it was pretty fun to be able to bring that to the table as well.
I love that. In a previous interview, you’ve talked about being drawn to the darker side of media. What was it like working with Tim Burton?
Oh, it was a racket. He’s so whimsical, and he’s a jokester, a funny old man. I feel people who do enjoy the darker side of things are in a way making light of it. And I think Tim personifies that in a lot of ways.
I’d also like to go into the tense scene when Bianca’s mother unexpectedly shows up for the parents’ weekend. She seems to be a trigger to Bianca, and then she admits that her siren song is drying up. So can you give us a some background on that scene?
So to start, Bianca’s relationship with her mother is obviously contentious. Bianca is not proud of how her mother uses her powers, which is part of the reason why Bianca is at Nevermore because she wants to learn how to use them for good. So she’s run away and otherwise has been able to create a new life for herself.
But when her mother finds her, everything kind of suddenly rushes back. We understand that maybe for some time it was just Bianca and her mother and this character comes in who marries her mother, and obviously is somebody that I must have met shortly before I left. So it’s really disappointing to learn that my mom is on full tilt in this direction and that she hasn’t chosen to take a different path like I did. It’s not something that I want to be dragged back into because I’m really proud of the life that I’ve been able to build for myself.
I also know that because we depended on each other for so long, we used our siren song to survive. To know that my mom might end up in a precarious place because her siren song, she won’t be able to use it anymore, is hard for me to cope with just on a personal level. But there’s also the threat of her ruining my life here at Nevermore.
So there’s a lot that Bianca has to consider when it comes to her Mom’s siren song drying up because she does still have empathy for her mom. As abusive of a relationship as it might be, they still did depend on each other all those years.
I think it beautifully illustrates complex mother-daughter relationships, even though there’s that kind of fantasy element with the siren song, it still gets to the core of those tough relationships that some young Black women do have with their mothers. So it was cool to see it illustrated in that way.
[Some are] inclined to view Bianca as a villain because of her spats with Wednesday, and Wednesday is supposed to be the protagonist. But by the end, how do you think people see her?
I even struggle with seeing her as a villain to start with. Wednesday does pick a fight with her after coming from a school for attempted murder. So I think Bianca’s reaction to her is…
Justified.
You’re a psychopath. You just tried to castrate somebody with piranhas, so I’m sorry that I don’t want you at my school.
My ex is obviously really into her. So of course I’m just thrust into insecurity. We’re very much the same person. It’s like if your mirror self suddenly was getting everything that you wanted, all the attention, all the love. And so I think less so a villain. Sure, an antagonist definitely. But because of that ability to see herself in Wednesday, there also is a protectiveness. And at the end of the day, they’re on the same side, and she, Bianca, has a moral compass to understand that Wednesday and her are on the same team.
So I really admire both women for coming together in that way. And who knows for season two, if there is one. That’s not confirmed at all, but who knows how they come together. I’m sure there are people in your life who maybe you’re not the best of friends with, but you really understand each other and can sympathize. And I think that’s definitely the path for Bianca and Wednesday.
Thank you for calling out the use of the word “villain” because I was apprehensive to use it. I’m like, “That’s not really what Bianca is.” But if you think about traditional storytelling and if you have anyone who’s butting heads with the protagonist, they’re automatically billed as a villain. Bianca’s someone that’s just concerned about her school and more importantly, concerned about her place in the world when she’s come in contact with this girl who’s so similar to her, like you said.
And obviously it does not go over my head going into it. I’m reading the script and I’m scared, of course, naturally. But then you understand, you think about the context and you say, “Okay. Well, one, this is an attempted murderer that she’s fighting.” But also I think when it comes to seeing me, my character going up against Wednesday, that knee jerk reaction is understandable. But I think that there’s so much room for characters who are played by Black actors. There’s so much room if people really engage with the text and understand the complexity of it all.
I know you can’t tell us, but do you think there’ll be a season two?
I mean, if you guys keep loving on it, that would be the hope.
And while you can’t confirm if there will be a season two, what would you like to see Bianca doing for the ideal next season?
Well, I know a lot of people are protective of Bianca and don’t like her mom, but I’d love to see her mom redeemed. I’d love to see her mom get a second chance, second lease at life, just like Bianca did. And I think that’s what Bianca wants for her mother as well. And so I think the theme of survival, what we have to do to get by, it really rings true for Bianca. And so I’d love to see that fleshed out and also to see where her relationship with Wednesday goes. I think there’s so much room to see so much beauty flower between them and in that relationship. I think there’s so much that younger viewers can learn from. At first disagreeing with people, but then making a space for them in your lives, both for Wednesday and for [Bianca’s mother.]
Keep up with Joy Sunday by following her on Instagram.
