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Evie Templeton gets free fireworks for her birthday every year, whether she wants them or not. The name Evie was actually derived from the fact that she was born on New Year’s Eve, in Barbados. Every year, as the calendar year turns the page to a new chapter, so does Templeton. “So yes, free fireworks on my birthday,” she says. “Or at least, I pretend they’re for me.”

The teenager, poised to break out with the premiere of Wednesday Season 2, is experiencing a slew of firsts. Her first big acting role, her first photo shoot, and on the very same day she sits down in a small English pub in her hometown near London, finally able to give her first in-depth interview about the global hit series (and a character she’s had to keep under wraps for months and months), she’s going to prom.

But she’ll have plenty of time for prom later. She’s going with friends. She’ll wear her hair long, straight, and down, with minimal makeup. She has a gorgeous navy blue dress — floor-length with sparkly embroidery on the corseted bodice — hanging up at home and ready to pop on. Prom is tonight, and yes, she’s excited, but she’s far more excited to finally get to talk about all things Wednesday.

“It’s sometimes a little bit hard to balance things, but I’ve got a great support system,” Templeton says. “It’s nice to still have ‘normal,’ at least for right now, but honestly I don’t think ‘normal’ really exists. It’s different for everyone and it’s just an idea.”

It’s immediately evident that Templeton is an old soul. Her star-making turn in Wednesday Season 2 as Agnes DeMille, Wednesday’s eccentric and delightfully unhinged stalker who begins to become an invaluable ally, couldn’t be further from the young star’s real-life energy.

Agnes is impulsive, charismatically unnerving, and dangerous — all delicious elements bound to make her an immediate fan favorite. Meanwhile Templeton is measured, soft-spoken, whip-smart, and even though she has a sharp sense of humor and laughs easily, there’s a gravity to her company that’s well beyond her 16 years. “I’m an extrovert with my family and my close friends, and a little bit more introverted in general,” she says.

The actor prefers coffee over tea, sweet over salty (chocolate, specifically), dogs over cats, summer over winter (her upbringing in Barbados until age 7 instilled in her a love of hot weather and surfing), the country over cities (though the theater girl does hope to live in New York City one day), jeans instead of skirts. And she’ll reluctantly share that her first two crushes were Jacob Elordi in The Kissing Booth and Theo James in the Divergent series. Impeccable taste.

Templeton has varied interests that run more contemporary — she loves Billie Eilish, Noah Kahan, and Lizzy McAlpine; she just finished watching Sirens and this season of America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders — but she also veers into older, sometimes surprising points of pop culture consumption. She loves Gilmore Girls, the Mission: Impossible film franchise, and ’90s film staples like The Last of the Mohicans, The Fugitive, and Legends of the Fall. Every Christmas, she and her family watch all the Indiana Jones films (her favorite is Raiders of the Lost Ark), and her go-to karaoke songs are “Dancing Queen” by ABBA and “Don’t Look Back in Anger” by Oasis. Every night before she goes to bed, she has to watch an episode of Friends.

“I can’t sleep if I don’t,” Templeton says. She chooses at random, however. “I like to jump around a little bit. I like mixing up the early seasons with the later seasons.” 

Inside Evie Templeton’s Transformation Into Agnes DeMille in Wednesday Season 2

When asked about one of the series’ lingering debates — whether Ross and Rachel were on a break — she becomes solemn. “Let’s dive into this,” she says, folding her hands with performative reverence. “What Ross did was definitely wrong. I’m Team Rachel and it helps that I love Jennifer Aniston. But there was a lot of wasted time. They should have gotten back together quickly. They’ve got to let bygones be bygones and move on, because they are perfect together.” Then she chuckles. “Don’t laugh, this is serious stuff. This is very serious.” It’s a fitting encapsulation of Templeton’s unique charm and maturity, and perhaps of her ability to see complex characters like Agnes DeMille with nuance and empathy — but also with refreshing levity.

Templeton believes that what you watch growing up helps shape you. It’s part of why she loves Wednesday. “I think that watching movies, and especially watching things that touch on more difficult topics, definitely gives you a greater understanding of the world and helps you not just live in a bubble. It helps you become a more sympathetic, understanding, and perceptive person.”

Despite a tendency toward introversion, Templeton has been drawn to performing since she was a child. The youngest of two, she has a sister who is six years her senior and a professional ballet dancer. Like many younger siblings, Templeton absorbed her sister’s interests — horseback riding, a penchant for thrifting clothes, a passion for vinyl records (in addition to Billie Eilish, Templeton loves Elvis Presley, Nina Simone, Etta James, and Billy Joel), and even her taste in books (a few key favorites include Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, the full Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins, and the Liars books by E. Lockhart). And, naturally, she also followed in her sister’s footsteps when it came to dance — Templeton’s first love. Appropriately, Agnes DeMille is named after the real-life choreographer who used to travel in the same circles as Addams Family creator Charles Addams in the ’50s and ’60s.

“My sister is a big inspiration for me. And because she’s a ballerina, I used to just tag along, and then I realized that I genuinely loved dance too. Ballet and jazz are the foundation of my love for performing,” Templeton says.

From there, her passion expanded into singing and acting and continues to ripple into writing and (she hopes) directing. Templeton participated in local theater productions, and at age 10 was cast in the West End production of Les Misérables where she performed as young Éponine and young Cosette for six months.

“I was obsessed with the first season. My sister and I binged it at least three times, 

if not more. We’re big fans.”

For Templeton’s first big acting gig, she drew inspiration from the old films she grew up watching with her grandmother. “Even when I was really little, my grandma used to sit me in front of the TV, and we’d watch black-and-white movies on DVD together,” she says. “We’d watch classics with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, and other classics like The Birds, and it gave me a love of old movies from a young age.”

As an aspiring artist, Templeton continued to balance formal education with auditioning, taking the train to nearby London whenever possible. She genuinely enjoys school — she’s a “big history girl” and also loves biology and literature. Her class just finished studying A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, and she’s excited to dive into learning more about the Salem witch trials next year. No matter what happens post-Wednesday, her plan is to finish school.

Outside the classroom, Templeton landed a couple of small roles — including Laura in upcoming movie Return to Silent Hill, Frieda in the BBC drama Life after Life, and Young Lisa in the thriller series Criminal Record — and continued to try out for bigger parts. When the opportunity came to audition for the second season of Wednesday, she wasn’t supposed to know what she was reading for; the audition sides were full of code names. But it didn’t take the sleuthing powers of her character’s idol to figure it out. 

“I was obsessed with the first season,” she says. “My sister and I binged it at least three times, if not more. We’re big fans. Because I was such a huge fan of the first season, and because of the tone of the audition sides and the way they were written, I had a bit of an idea.”

Templeton submitted an initial self-tape, went for an in-person audition, and then Christmas came. She did her best to put the role out of her mind, and to keep her expectations low. She’d been up for a few big, exciting roles in the past and remembered too well the sting of disappointment. It felt like such a long shot. But a couple of weeks after the holiday, news arrived, and it was very, very good: Tim Burton and co-creators and showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar wanted to meet with her via Zoom. 

She was nervous — terrified, even — but found open and receptive creative collaborators in Burton, Gough, and Millar. “They just talked about me as a person, about my idea of Agnes, and we started to build her together,” Templeton says. “They had a very collaborative approach throughout the whole of filming, which is amazing — to be a 15-year-old girl with that kind of involvement in building the character.”

Next came a Zoom chemistry read with Jenna Ortega, who plays the titular Wednesday and the object of Agnes’s obsession, and Emma Myers, who plays Enid, Wednesday’s perky werewolf roommate and best friend who the scheming Agnes is keen to dispose of and replace. 

Templeton did her best to calm her nerves before their call. “I listened to a little bit of Billie Eilish,” she says “I tried to keep myself relaxed, did some triangular breathing — which I always try to do before auditions and performances. And then I tried to think that they were just my friends, and that I was just having a conversation with my friends, and that definitely helped. It was very surreal, though. Afterwards, I ran around my kitchen and then had to lie down.”

The creative team had found their Agnes DeMille. In fact Burton knew instantaneously. “When I first saw her, it was very clear that she was the person for this role, and her casting actually helped shape the character,” he says. “It was like a different version of seeing Jenna — you immediately knew she was Wednesday. Evie’s got this very unique quality and look and vibe to her. It’s like a weird, silent-movie actress quality.”

Millar adds, “Evie has amazing eyes that can emote both compassion and complete psychotic behavior.” This became a key part of Templeton’s character development for Agnes. Born with big, expressive eyes that morph between blue and green depending on the light, Templeton grew to realize that there was also an unintended twist to her name. “I have unfortunate initials,” she says with a laugh, “which I don’t think my mum thought through until later. Because technically I’m ‘E.T.’ So yeah, I’m an alien, with my big Bette Davis eyes. It’s quite funny.” 

Templeton took inspiration from the way Ortega communicates much of Wednesday’s character through the eyes (“I think that’s something that Jenna does beautifully,” she says), and Burton helped her guide Agnes’s specific gaze. He explains, “It’s also about the staring and maybe not responding right away, just having responses that are a little bit off; responses where there’s something that’s slightly unsettling.”

Ortega was impressed, and affectionately nicknamed Templeton “Young Evie,” which stuck. “She’s such a little star,” Ortega says. “She’s such a strong performer. She fit in so seamlessly. I was always impressed and so excited to get to work with her. And she plays a character that could be unlikable, but Evie’s sweet and earnest. I was really blown away by her.”

Gough and Millar also recognized Templeton’s grounded and mature demeanor. “She’s an incredible young actor who is wise beyond her years,” says Millar. “When she read with Jenna and Emma, she just immediately snapped right into our world.”

The special dynamic between Templeton, Ortega, and Myers continued throughout filming. Templeton says, “Emma and Jenna were both big sisters to me and really helped guide me through this experience, because it’s my first big step into the industry. It’s been really nice to have them as guides through it all.”

They were also confidants of sorts. Even after she’d landed the role, Templeton had to keep it a complete and total secret — from her friends, her classmates, even her own family. “Honestly,” she says, laughing, “my dad doesn’t really even know. He knows that I’m in the show, but he doesn’t know any of the details. I want it to be a surprise.” 

She shuttled between Ireland and home during filming, signed up for dance lessons in Dublin so her skills remained sharp, and kept up with her schoolwork, striking a balance between Nevermore and her normal routine. “It’s nice to have this life that’s kind of separate from everything else, from the crazy surreal experience that I had filming in Ireland,” Templeton says.

She approached embodying Agnes with the same measured analysis and attention to detail that she seems to apply across her life — from Friends storylines to the psychological benefits of consuming cinema. To fully immerse herself in Agnes’s particular headspace, Templeton turned to classic films. She watched Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to “develop Agnes’s elements of madness.” She revisited Single White Female, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, and took special inspiration from Meryl Streep’s performance in The Hours. 

Templeton filled a journal with hand-written, detailed observations and ideas about Agnes, ranging from her motivations to her mysterious origins and home life, and even found a signature earthy perfume for her character. She meticulously assembled a mood board full of gothic imagery, carefully scrawled notes, a drawing of a giant eye, a small toy knife from the board game Cluedo, three red paper roses (signifying the characters Agnes, Wednesday, and Enid), and a swatch of Agnes’s bright red wig.

“I did feel really connected 

to Agnes straightaway. I think everybody has a little bit of darkness in them. Agnes is very insecure at heart. She seeks validation and approval.”

Those scarlet red pigtails — an obvious imitation of the object of her obsession, but punctuated by key differences like the fiery hue and blunter bangs — were crucial to creating the character, and a creative choice led by Burton. “We didn’t want to just make Agnes a mini Wednesday,” Burton says. “I liked the idea of the pigtails, but there’s something good and different about the red hair, which makes it slightly more unnerving. Not having the same hair color was important.”

From her first full introduction as Wednesday’s 13-year-old Nevermore student stalker in Episode 2, Agnes oozes creepy precociousness. There’s her slow clap, her chilling curtsy (Templeton’s own addition during filming), her breathily stylized voice. Though she hasn’t actually killed anyone (yet), Agnes deploys blackmail, manipulation, stalking, and various forms of weaponry to achieve her singular goal: to be Wednesday Addams’s new best friend. And as part of her obsession, Agnes becomes fixated on eliminating Wednesday’s current best friend and roommate. She almost succeeds, bringing Enid a breath away from being impaled by a blade in Iago Tower on Prank Day. From that moment on, it’s war.

The two Nevermore outcasts exchange barbs throughout the whole season (Templeton’s personal favorite? “Park your claws, Rainbow Barbie”), and generally loathe each other. But offscreen, the relationship between Templeton and Myers couldn’t have been more different. 

During the filming of Episode 2, between takes of the scene in which Agnes nearly kills Enid, Templeton and Myers were doing ballet barre routines on the set railings together. Templeton recalls, “There were knives hanging from the ceiling, and we’re just hanging out below, doing some pliés and tendus. Emma is the sweetest girl ever. She’s just fantastic.”

Myers is just as admiring of her co-star. “I love Evie,” she says. “She is one of the most talented young actors that I’ve ever worked with. She’s so good and she’s so professional, and she really just understands everything. She gets it. Jenna and I were talking about this when she was cast. It’s incredible how she keeps up. It doesn’t even feel like she’s new. She’s such a cool person. I love her to death.”

The two actors bonded over everything from their shared backgrounds as dancers to their beloved pets. “She reminds me of myself when I was younger,” says Myers. “I also really love Agnes as a character, and how Evie brought her to life. I love the way that Agnes challenges Enid. I love their petty little fights. Evie’s very sweet and different from her character.”

Despite those differences, Templeton instantly related to Agnes — and still does. “I did feel really connected to her straightaway, the first time I read through the audition sides,” the actor says.” I think everybody has a little bit of darkness in them. Agnes is very insecure at heart. She seeks validation and approval.” As Templeton sees it, even Agnes’s powers of invisibility demonstrate that “she’s someone who easily slips into the shadows, and that marries into how she slips into Wednesday’s shadow.”

Behind her character’s unpredictable and maniacal actions, there’s a greater and more universal underlying lesson, Templeton believes. “It’s a really important message, especially for my generation, to not try and hide in someone else’s shadow, to be your own self and to embrace individuality.”

Burton praises Templeton’s insightful approach to playing a complex personality. “What Evie brought to it was very, very strong and she comes across like a stalker, but she’s also got this deep emotional quality to her, and a vulnerability to her, and a mystery to her, and she’s embodying all those different things in one character,” he says. “I love working with people that surprise you, and she definitely did that. She’s got a very, very, very strong presence.”

What’s next for Agnes? You’ll have to tune into Part 2 of Wednesday Season 2 when it premieres on Sept. 3 — but you can definitely expect to see much more of her. “Agnes is now part of the firmament of Nevermore,” says Millar. “We will continue to evolve her relationships with Wednesday and Enid, as well as other characters in the show.”

As for Templeton, she’s just trying to enjoy her many firsts. She loved playing a bit of dress-up for her first-ever photo shoot, mixing some of her own pieces with clothing provided by a stylist. She’s excited to keep talking about her experience on Wednesday — which sometimes feels like it didn’t even happen, like it was all just a dream. She’s eager for people to see the show. She can’t wait.

“I’m incredibly excited. It’s like opening a different chapter of my life. It’s honestly a little bit scary, but I’m really looking forward to it. To gain this kind of once-in-a-lifetime opportunity when you’re 16 years old is incredibly surreal and rare. I’m just trying to make the most of it and enjoy every second, and not rush anything,” she says with a laugh. “Acting is something that I really love, so hopefully it’ll be a big part of my future.”

No matter what the future holds for Evie Templeton, it certainly promises to be bright — the kind of bright Wednesday Addams would absolutely loathe; as bright as the fireworks Templeton will watch colorfully exploding in the sky for her 17th birthday later this year. Remember her name. You’ll be hearing it again.