The iconic Bad Wolf from Doctor Who has been playing a mysterious werewolf music teacher in Wednesday season two, and viewers have been left wondering what Billie Piper has up her flowy sleeves on the show. She, alongside whoever Lady Gaga will be playing when the Netflix show returns, remains another intriguing new addition to the show’s stacked ensemble.
Piper’s turn as Isadora Capri marks a departure for the actress, whom director Tim Burton cast as a former child prodigy not too unlike Wednesday (Jenna Ortega), who has returned to Nevermore to be the new head of the academy’s music department. “I’ve always wanted to play a sort of floaty, liberal musician or art teacher,” Piper told Tudum and added that she purposely decided to play her as an American to mix it up, as she’s “a little tired of playing English people.”
“I like the fact that Capri is a bit less buttoned-up than some of the other teachers. She’s a bit more available to the moon and the stars. She’s quite majestic. I really wanted to play her as this character who is very sort of porous and available to energy and feelings—but with a sort of steely core; someone who flits between two personalities,” she said of her take, which Burton encouraged. “Tim talked to me a bit about the role, talked about how some of it was open to interpretation, what I could maybe bring to it, what I liked about it.”
The air of mystery is conscious as Wednesday is pushed to integrate as part of the student body; she claims to want to remain an outcast among outcasts. So she and viewers don’t know if Capri is a new threat to Wednesday or just a challenging ally. “They’re both kind of control freaks,” Piper explained. “They like things to go a certain way, that they’re drawn to perfection, and they’re very methodical … they’re kind of alike, but they also rub each other the wrong way.”
From what we can glean from the few and far between moments Piper and Ortega shared in the first installment of Wednesday season two, the tension is intentional. “Capri’s teachings and message to Wednesday is quite often about how she had spent her life training as a musician from a very young age, and became very successful as a young musician, but at what cost? And I think this endless quest of Wednesday’s is something that chimes with her,” Piper elaborated as to why her character wants to have the Addams loner under her tutelage and perform in the Gala meant to take place in part two of the season.
“I feel like Isadora wants to really motivate and help Wednesday excel—at least for now. She is a tricky character to pin down, which in many ways was great, and I was up for the ride. And at this point in my career, it’s the kind of challenge that I relish, so I wasn’t too stressed about it,” she said of her character remaining one of the mysterious threads that we hope gets let loose and revealed under the full moon come September 3, when Wednesday returns on Netflix. Let the Bad Wolf out again!
Watch Wednesday Season 2, part one, on Netflix now; part two premieres September 3.
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