Catherine Zeta-Jones to play Morticia Addams on Netflix's Wednesday

Tim Burton's Netflix series about Wednesday Addams has added the creepy and kooky matriarch

By Sam Barsanti  |  August 9, 2021 | 9:39pm
TV News Netflix
Catherine Zeta-Jones to play Morticia Addams on Netflix's Wednesday
Catherine Zeta-Jones Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Hollywood Foreign Press Association

Just a few days after we found out that the great Luis Guzmán would be playing Gomez Addams in Tim Burton’s Netflix series Wednesday (a very fun choice), Netflix has announced another big addition to the cast: Catherine Zeta-Jones will be guest-starring as Morticia Addams, filling the creepy and kooky shoes that previously belonged to the likes of Carolyn Jones, Anjelica Huston, Daryl Hannah, and—most recently, in the 2019 animated movie—Charlize Theron. The fact that Zeta-Jones’ involvement is being billed as a guest star role means she probably won’t pop up in the eight-episode Netflix series all that much, but that’s to be expected.

After all, the show is called Wednesday, not The Addams Family, and it’s about the eponymous all-together ookey daughter of the family (played by Jenna Ortega from Scream here). Rather than having family adventures, the show—like Black-ish spin-off Grown-ish—is about Wednesday going off to school at Nevermore Academy and getting involved in “a sleuthing, supernaturally infused mystery.” She’s going to learn how to use psychic powers, she’s going to “thwart a monstrous killing spree that has terrorized the local town,” and she’s going to “solve the supernatural mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago.” You know, the supernatural mystery that Gomez and Morticia are always going on about? The one that nobody could solve until Wednesday started attending Nevermore Academy? (We’re just having a laugh, we know you can’t make a Netflix show without some kind of overarching mystery that people will tweet about.)

Like we noted above, the series is being directed and executive produced by Tim Burton, which is much more exciting than that famous supernatural mystery anyway. Al Gough and Miles Millar are serving as showrunners, and the rest of the cast—as in, Wednesday’s brother Pugsley and maybe Uncle Fester—has yet to be announced.

 
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