‘Wednesday’ Composer Chris Bacon On Tim Burton’s Advice For Score

“One of the very first things that Tim [Burton] said when we started was ‘don’t make this funny’,” Wednesday composer Chris Bacon said about the musical direction he got from the series’ Oscar-nominated director and executive producer.

“It’s a funny show, but Tim Burton, he was very serious: ‘Do not play funny music.’ Play them serious,” Bacon added during a panel for the show at Deadline’s Sound & Screen Television awards-season concert event. “The same way Jenna Ortega plays it. That makes it funnier if it’s darker, heavier, more serious. Keep it grounded in that macabre fantasy world.”

In Season 2, Ortega’s Wednesday encounters plenty: she contends with a corrupt principal in Steve Buscemi’s Principal Dort, battles her monstrous boyfriend, bonds with mother Morticia, and even dies and rises again.

RELATED: All Of Deadline’s Sound & Screen TV Panels

“Season 2 was a chance to take what we started in Season 1 and create this language that was quirky but also not too quirky that felt like it could have existed at any time,” says Bacon.

Wednesday is a contemporary show, “but the Addams Family doesn’t exist in time,” added the composer.

With moments such as a monster mom finding her monster son, “it was chance to do more and be unabashedly thematic,” said Bacon, who went to town with a sweeping cinematic score accentuated by French horns when Enid (Emma Myers) turns into a werewolf to save Wednesday.

It’s not the Addams Family without the harpsicord, which was used in the original theme of the 1964 TV series. But how does Bacon regulate the instrument he quips as one “I hated my entire life”? “It’s part of their sound and it’s part of what keeps the Addams Family timeless,” he says. “It’s a great sound to throw in to remind us that we’re there.”

Season 3 of Wednesday began production in Ireland at the end of February, adding Chris Sarandon, Noah Taylor, Oscar Morgan, Kennedy Moyer and Winona Ryder to the cast. A recent photo that was dropped shows the action heading to Paris.

In regards to teasing what Season 3’s score might sound like, Bacon simply said, “Music is being made.”

Check back Monday for the panel video.