Jenna Ortega tells Christina Ricci how she avoided rehashing her portrayal of Wednesday Addams

The latest interpretation of The Addams Family, starring Jenna Ortega as Wednesday, hits Netflix next month

By Katie Chow  |  October 21, 2022 | 4:33pm
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Jenna Ortega tells Christina Ricci how she avoided rehashing her portrayal of Wednesday Addams
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Jenna Ortega in Wednesday Graphic: Netflix

At just 20 years old, Jenna Ortega has become one of today’s top scream queens, appearing in the new Scream, Foo Fighters flick Studio 666, and A24's X this year alone. Now, she’s about to be seen in a new corner of the horror world, joining the iconic Addams Family in Netflix’s Wednesday.

America’s preeminent goth family got its start as a New Yorker cartoon in 1938 and has been interpreted for the screen throughout the decades. Though recent animated movies boasted the star power of Oscar Isaac and Charlize Theron in the voice cast, it’s the pair of early ’90s films that have loomed the largest in popular culture. Ahead of the new series’ release, Interview Magazine facilitated a conversation between Ortega and Christina Ricci, who starred in The Addams Family and Addams Family Values. Of course, they talked about their experiences playing Wednesday.

“Honestly, it was more difficult than I was anticipating because everything that you did is so flawless,” Ortega tells Ricci.

With Tim Burton behind the camera for several episodes, Wednesday puts a fresh spin on the Addams Family by focusing on its title character, though of course there will be appearances by Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones), Gomez (Luis Guzmán), and Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen). Ortega’s Wednesday is off to boarding school at the Nevermore Academy, where she gets caught up in a Nancy Drew-style mystery. In a meta casting, Ricci has a supporting role as the supervisor of the school’s dorm.

“I’m just saying you are who people see as Wednesday, and that’s just the truth,” Ortega continues. “I feel like the script was very reminiscent of ’90s Wednesday. It was really important to me that I wasn’t doing a knockoff of your performance, and it was different.”

Part of making the character different came just from the amount of time audiences will get to spend with Wednesday. With eight hour-long episodes, the show offers the opportunity to go in-depth on a character that began as part of a single-panel cartoon. Ortega’s input became crucial to carrying the show.

“I felt like sometimes in the attempt to make her a human girl, they were trying to make her any other teenage girl,” the actor says. “I remember Tim being really wonderful about things like that and calling me to his trailer in the mornings and saying, ‘What are you uncomfortable saying? What do you want to say?’ When you have supportive collaborators like Tim, it makes it a lot easier.”

Part of the process of updating Wednesday was changing up her look, though of course she still has the braids and collared dress synonymous with the character. This time around, she has bangs, something that particularly caught Ricci’s eye.

“We tried everything because it was important to Tim that she look different than before,” Ortega describes. “There were even little tiny braids and super long, thick braids. We tried streaks of gray hair.”

Wednesday premieres on Netflix on November 23, because spooky season doesn’t end on October 31.

 
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