Thing Speaks: Meet The Man Behind ‘Wednesday’’s Disembodied Hand

It’s exactly how you say, because magicians don’t want to bring attention to their hands. But this time we had to do that 100%. So, me and Tim and the VFX team tried to come up with ways to bring all that attention to small details. If you look at it, we don’t do too much movement. We don’t do too much body language and stuff like that. We try to make small gestures be seen. We tried to elevate even the smallest movement to the max.

What other elements went into the creation of Thing?

We found ways to take parts from American Sign Language, from [hand gestures] that military people use in war. We try to take morse code, we tried to take anything possible about hands and come up with our own language.

Which part was the hardest to learn?

I remember spending a lot of time trying to perfect the middle finger gesture. Even that one was very hard to express with so much emotion. It’s not just a middle finger, it’s the whole emotion that you give when you do that. So we paid attention to each and every detail, and Tim really did that a lot. He was so passionate about Thing, he wanted to shoot the scene 20 times if we needed it.

Sounds like you spent a lot of time in the mirror…

Flipping myself off, yeah.

Were you studying how the other fingers reacted, and the tension in the muscles?

Yeah. If you look at that scene and you pause it, you’ll see that the stump on the wrist stays a little twisted. So it’s like…I don’t how to explain it.

It’s a little bit of attitude.

Yeah, yeah.

I see you have some tattoos on the fingers of your Thing hand.

Yes, I did them way before the shootings happened and the prosthetic team spent a lot of time to cover them with paints and stuff like that.

Are they the play, pause, and fast forward symbols?

Yeah, when I did them, I thought of having the possibility to pause or to play life. There are some moments in life when you just want to pause them and enjoy it more and some moments when you would want to rewind and see it again. And on the thumb I have lightning because I’m…I don’t know how to say it. I’m an agitated person. I’m like the Tasmanian devil. 

And also, on the other hand, [raises left forearm] I have a small tattoo of Thing, which I did a couple of years ago without knowing that I will be Thing. I don’t know. The only tattoo I did during the shootings was I have the Nightshade Society symbol on my chest tattooed.

You must have been a big fan of The Addams Family and Thing before you did this?

I loved the character so much because its a big personality in a small hand. I watched it all when I was small.