It seems like the entire world is losing its mind over Netflix’s Wednesday starring Jenna Ortega. From near universal praise for the show itself to viral Wednesday dancing memes, it’s one of the most popular pieces of media of any kind right now. And it’s extra special for fans of The Addams Family because the show also co-stars former Wednesday Christina Ricci.
There are a number of different ways one could imagine Jenna Ortega reacting to the news that Christina Ricci would be in Wednesday with her, and as it turns out, she had more than one of those reactions. Speaking with Buzz, Ortega admits that her first reaction to the news was that she thought co-starring with Ricci would be cool, but then she realized how potentially complicated that would be, for quite obvious reasons. Ortega said…
When I found out that she was a part of the show, I thought, ‘Oh, cool.’ And then I thought ‘Oh, shit.’ Because it’s nerve wracking. Especially because she is everyone’s most recent or most beloved iteration of Wednesday.
While The Addams Family has existed since cartoonist Charles Addams created the comic in 1938, for most modern audiences, their first exposure to the characters came in the two movies that included Christina Ricci as Wednesday that were originally released in the early 1990s. They were the movies that made Christina Ricci a star, so it’s not surprising that Jenna Ortega could be potentially intimidated by that.
As different as the Netflix version of Wednesday is, the character has aged up by many years, it was likely that people were going to compare Ortega’s portrayal of Wednesday to Ricci’s regardless of anything else. The fact that Ricci was right there in the show only guaranteed that the comparisons would come.
Ortega had said previously that there was little if any discussion between herself and Christina Ricci regarding their portrayals, largely because the characters are ultimately so different. Netflix’s Wednesday sees the character as a high school age teen rather than a child, and the show is a mystery. It has more in common with something like Veronica Mars than it does the ‘90s Addams Family movies.
Considering how popular Wednesday has been, it remained the top series on Netflix for several weeks until the recent debut of Harry & Meghan, it’s somewhat shocking that there hasn’t already been confirmation that future seasons are on the way. While Netflix’s process for deciding what show return and what do not has always been opaque, it’s rare to see a show be quite this successful. It looks like future generations Jenna Ortega may become the most beloved iteration of Wednesday.
