Wednesday: The New Addams Family Netflix Series By Tim Burton Does A First Look of The Cast
PC: Netflix.
The upcoming Netflix original series, Wednesday just debuted some exclusive first-look photographs of the cast. A spooky yet funny adaptation of the beloved 1960s-era TV series The Addams Family – which has also been adapted as a cartoon, musical, and beloved 1990s movie – Wednesday is a show that will focus on the story of Wednesday Addams. Honing in on her struggles to live in the shadow of expectations of her mother, while also, going against the grain of modern culture in a fashion that the very gothic Addams Family has always been known for.
The first-look images revealed by Variety showcase Catherine Zeta-Jones as the matriarch of the family, Morticia Addams. It also highlights Luis Guzman as Gomez, Isaac Ordoñez as Pugsley, and of course, features rising star and scream queen, Jenna Ortega, as the titular character. It’s also been previously confirmed that actress Christina Ricci, who played Wednesday Addams in the live-action movies, will be playing a brand new character in the TV series.
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“I saw some of the wardrobe photos before I went [to set] so I knew [what she looked like in character] and I was like, it’s such a great modern take on Wednesday,” said Ricci about Ortega’s performance and style in an interview with Variety. “It’s so true tonally to the heart and soul of [the original], but it’s then it’s incredibly modern and it’s great.”
The upcoming series has also nabbed the king of gothic-styled directing himself, Tim Burton, who will work as the series executive producer. Surprisingly, this will be Tim Burton's first project adapting The Addam’s Family despite several pitches and failed attempts to get the director onboard during the 1990s. Burton is revealed to have directed half of the entire series, as well as provided visual directions regarding the overall aesthetics of the series. He’s also brought along to the project, academy awarding-winning costume designer, Colleen Atwood, who has in the past, worked on some of Tim Burton’s best works such as Edward Scissor Hands, Sweeny Todd, and Sleepy Hollow.
PC: Vanity Fair. Photo by Matthias Clamer
Wednesday is created by Miles Millar and Alfred Gough, who are the partners behind the longstanding hit CW series Smallville. The two are responsible for recruiting Tim Burton to help bring back a lot of the original looks and appeal of the Charles Addams cartoons.
“He wanted the silhouette to look more like the Charles Addams cartoons, which is Gomez shorter than Morticia, versus the kind of suave Raul Julia version in the movies,” Gough says regarding Gomez’s new design choices in the piece by Vanity Fair. “He’s also incredibly debonair and romantic, and I think he has all those classic ingredients of the Gomez that we’ve seen come before, but he brings something also very different,” Millar adds. “That’s something that was very important to the show—that it didn’t feel like a remake or a reboot. It’s something that lives within the Venn diagram of what happened before, but it’s its own thing. It’s not trying to be the movies or the ’60s TV show. That was very important to us and very important to Tim.”
PC: Vanity Fair. Photo by Matthias Clamer
After the two pitched Tim Burton, the director returned their call after reading their pilot script showing a surprise interest neither director was expecting to see.
“He was interested in where it was going, and the mystery of the show,” Gough said. “He had a lot of questions about the previous television work we'd done, and how we were able to achieve it. He really loved that you had time to be with Wednesday and explore the character and you didn't have to, you know, wrap things up in an hour and 45 minutes.”
"The ambition for the show was to make it an 8-hour Tim Burton movie," Millar adds.
PC: Vanity Fair. Photo by Vlad Cioplea
The series is said to be murder mystery-themed, where a series of small-town deaths seem to be happening around Nevermore Academy, the boarding school for social outcasts that Wednesday is attending. Now in high school and living on her own, the normally macabre Wednesday feels… oddly at peace thanks to the familiarities of death surrounding her.
One big issue of note from the revealed images is that Uncle Fester is not featured in the photos. Which seems to be intentional. “We have no comment on Uncle Fester," Gough said regarding as to why. “Just watch the show.”
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Source(s): Vanity Fair, Variety