From first kisses to YouTube makeup tutorials, Wednesday Addams is in many ways your average American teen.
But she hasn't let go of her ghoulish side either.
Most people think Wednesday Addams was born on screen, but her debut came long before
the '60s sitcom The Addams Family.
Like many popular characters, she got her start in a comic strip penned by American
cartoonist Charles Addams.
His woeful tales first appeared in the New Yorker in 1938.
Addams also created work that wasn't all doom and gloom.
But like Edgar Allan Poe, that's all that people seem to remember him for.
Naming his creepiest characters after himself certainly didn't help matters.
It also didn't help that, according to NPR, his idea of a good time consisted of telling
his friends he visited insane asylums for fun and offered to drive friends home — only
to seek out routes that passed dozens of cemeteries.
Wednesday Addams may have existed long before she appeared on TV, but when she meandered
on her comic strip with the rest of her family, she was actually nameless.
According to a letter to the editor posted in the New Yorker, Joan Blake, a mother in
a custody dispute, gave Addams inspiration for Wednesday's name.
When Addams voiced his concern about not having a name for the comic strip daughter as he
went into a TV show deal, Blake recited the line of an old nursery rhyme, "Wednesday — Wednesday's
child is full of woe."
The cutesy rhyme is a fun adage meant to determine what a child will be like depending on the
day of the week they're born.
Funnily enough, Wednesday's middle name is Friday in the sitcom, but despite her morbid
tendencies, she's still pretty "loving and giving," so it still tracks.
It's pretty tricky to make a six-year-old seem intimidating without going the full-on
demonic route, and the '60s Addams Family sitcom faced that very issue.
Sure, a young Lisa Loring was quite capable of a fearless glower, but it usually prompted
an "awws" rather than gasps.
Even her darkest lines don't seem so menacing out of the mouth of the adorably braided child.
"Nice knife.
Can I play autopsy with it?"
As a whole, Loring's Wednesday is kindhearted and quick to help her family with any task
that needs doing, even something as mundane as fetching the mail.
"Thank you, Thing."
But while the '60s series slightly muted her angsty personality from the comics, the '90s
films starring Christina Ricci brought her back to her darker persona and aged her up
a bit from the six-year-old she was at the beginning of the show.
From then on, she and Pugsley have flip-flopped between being the older sibling in multiple
projects the fictional Addams family starred in.
Everyone wants a piece of Wednesday Addams' dishonor, including none other than the super
sleuth pup, Scooby-Doo.
Wednesday appears in the episode "Wednesday is Missing" of the confusingly titled TV series
The New Scooby-Doo Movies.
The episode, only the third in the series, serves as the backdoor pilot to the 1973 animated
Addams Family series.
When Morticia and Gomez Addams are looking for some "us" time, the Scooby gang are hoodwinked
into playing housekeepers for the wayward Addams children after The Mystery Machine
goes missing.
Wednesday uncharacteristically wears a pink version of her usual collared dress.
However, she's still quick to get a "voodoo booboo" while she sticks needles in a voodoo
doll, so she definitely hasn't lost her spooky streak beneath the smiles and the pink.
Even her parents are disappointed with her peppy demeanor, forlornly remarking that she's
growing up to be a "sweet, cheerful young lady."
The horrors.
One of the most hotly debated aspects of child stars is kissing scenes that happen too soon
for young actors.
Whether it's in modern films and TV shows or those of decades past, the concept of children
kissing will always garner a spirited discussion.
Where should we draw the line?
At just 13 years old, Ricci had her first onscreen kiss with future Numb3rs star David
Krumholtz, who was only two years older.
The Addams Family Values scene marked the latter actor's first onscreen kiss as well.
In a 1993 interview, Ricci was asked if there was "a big to-do" made about the kiss.
She brushed it off, saying,
"The way memory works in childhood, it all blurs.
So I don't have a sense of who I was or what I felt like before I was an actress, essentially."
In a way, it's a little sad that Ricci had to grow up quite so fast and in the limelight.
While she may have told the interviewer that it was no big deal, Krumholtz told Buzzfeed
for the film's 20th anniversary that Ricci was less than thrilled with her scene partner's
peach fuzz.
He noted,
Most child stars have done anything humanly possible to distance themselves from their
most iconic role, but Christina Ricci has other ideas.
She told the AV Club that the Addams Family films have had "the biggest impact" on her
"career and life."
She remains fully aware of the role that defined her career, and still feels a kinship toward
her darker alter ego.
"I just got to do a lot of weird things that, you know, normally I wouldn't get to do."
Ricci told the A.V. Club,
We'll probably never know just how much the role shaped Ricci as a person, but she's certainly
defied the tragic fate of many child stars – so maybe Wednesday's resilience and strength
played a part in Ricci's transition from a child star to a successful adult actress.
She posed this question to the AV Club:
In a sobering follow-up thought, Ricci noted,
So in a way, she and Wednesday are permanently intertwined — for better or for worse.
If you thought young Wednesday Addams is a mood, she has nothing on comedian Melissa
Hunter's Adult Wednesday Addams miniseries.
We first got a glimpse at Wednesday's enlightened social views in Addams Family Values when
she ranted during her camp's Thanksgiving skit, which glorified the "peace" the pilgrims
extended to the Native Americans.
Hunter took the social commentary 10 steps further with her ultra-feminist rendition
of adult Wednesday as she tried to reconcile her gloomy yet woke disposition amid the superficiality
she faced in LA.
Between savagely getting even with a handful of cat-callers and showing an entitled "It
girl" who's boss, the show's 13 episodes weren't nearly enough.
"You want a book deal, but you can't afford a ghostwriter so now you just post duck-faced
selfies with your green juice every morning."
Sadly, according to the Daily Dot, the Tee & Charles Addams Foundation wasn't as charmed
as the show's millions of viewers, slapping a lawsuit on the young comedian and her low-budget
passion project.
After a copyright cease-and-desist forced Hunter to take the series down in 2015, rumors
floated around that the foundation took action due to a planned MGM animated movie.
It took years for the film to happen, but that very well could have been why the foundation
robbed us of a dry, witty, and woke Wednesday Addams.
Let's face it: We all have those days where we feel like channeling our inner angsty Wednesday Addams.
Luckily for those looking to get her pallid complexion just right, MGM released a YouTube
video called "Wednesday's Late-Nite Makeup Tutorial."
The video is perfect for anyone whose real-life eye shadows aren't quite dark enough.
And don't worry, as Wednesday notes in the video:
"Guaranteed to make you look like you haven't slept in years."
The video served to promote the release of the 2019 animated film The Addams Family.
Wednesday takes viewers through her arsenal of makeup by brands like "Coverghoul's Depressed
Powder," "Dry N Somber lip chalk," and the very exclusive ashes of her ancestors.
MGM also produced a video on "How To Make Wednesday's Halloween Lemonade," and she wasn't
the only Addams character to get some animated YouTube love.
There were even some Morticia, Gomez, and Grandma tutorials to make your Halloween — or
a random Wednesday afternoon — extra spooky.
A Tim Burton-led Addams Family project has been a long time coming — since the '90s,
to be exact.
People usually assume that the macabre director has helmed at least one of the "Addams Family"
iterations that have graced the screen in the past few decades, but sadly, that's not
the case.
According to Film Stories, Burton even turned down the offer to direct the 1991 film, with
the honor eventually going to Barry Sonnenfeld.
Even the 2019 animated film seemed like a Burton project, though Greg Tiernan and Conrad
Vernon directed the film.
As it turns out, the third time's the charm, and Burton is finally lending his dismal expertise
to the dastardly family in a live-action Netflix series simply titled Wednesday.
The series, of course, focuses on everyone's favorite angst queen: Wednesday Addams.
But unlike her previous onscreen appearances, the Addams' daughter will be aged up quite a bit.
According to early reports, Wednesday's storyline has a bit of a Nancy Drew vibe while she tries
to solve a supernatural case from her parents' past.
With a slight nod to Edgar Allan Poe, she attends Nevermore Academy.
Jenna Ortega is already a Scream queen, but playing Wednesday still proved a challenge.
What typically makes Wednesday a fascinating and status quo-defying child is just that
— she's a child.
Most people expect young girls to be docile, frilly, and innocent when they've barely reached
double digits.
That stereotype has faced increasingly widespread challenges in recent years, but it still hasn't
fully gone away, and that's precisely what makes Wednesday a fascinating character.
So, with an aged-up Wednesday, how did Ortega and the Wednesday writers avoid making her
a run-of-the-mill snarky teen?
According to a conversation Ortega had with EW, that was one of the biggest challenges
of taking on the role.
Ortega explained to the outlet:
It's tough to film such a long series about a sardonic and somewhat unemotional character,
but Tim Burton knows what he's doing.
Ortega praised Burton's attention to detail to EW, saying,
Though Ortega noted some of the challenges she had getting into character and keeping
Wednesday fresh, Christina Ricci isn't worried about the younger star's performance.
As it turns out, Addams Family Values won't be the last time fans see Ricci in this kooky world.
Her role in Wednesday has given her a front-row seat for Ortega's performance, and according
to Ricci, she's living up to the hype.
After applauding Tim Burton and Gwendolyn Christie's work on the show during a Variety
interview, Ricci deemed Ortega's performance as Wednesday "incredible."
Ricci told the outlet:
If Ricci is down with Ortega's take on the character, fans have gotten all the approval
they need directly from a generation's favorite onscreen Wednesday.