‘Wednesday’ Creators Have Ideas for More Netflix Addams Family Shows
The new Netflix series Wednesday reinvents The Addams Family for a new generation. Jenna Ortega plays Wednesday Addams as a teenager in boarding school. The rest of the Addams Family appears in the show, and creators Al Gough and Miles Millar have ideas for more shows featuring the family.
Gough and Millar were on The Hollywood Reporter’s TV’s Top Five podcast on Oct. 28 to preview Wednesday. When hosts Lesley Goldberg and Daniel Fienberg asked them about ideas for other Addams Family-related shows, Gough and Millar teased the possibilities. Wednesday premieres Nov. 23 on Netflix.
The ‘Wednesday’ cast could appear in other ‘Addams Family’ shows
Ortega is the star of Wednesday, and Christina Ricci and Gwendoline Christie are in every episode. However, they didn’t cast Catherine Zeta-Jones, Luis Guzman, and Fred Armisen just for cameos.
“An Addams-connected universe, we definitely talked about it and we talked about it with Netflix,” Gough said on TV’s Top Five. “When you create a world like this, the intention is any one of these characters could be the lead in their own show. Certainly, it’s cast that way. When you have Fred Armisen, when you have Catherine Zeta-Jones, when you have Luis Guzman, that’s certainly something that we’ve discussed and would very much like, in success, to branch out this world beyond just Wednesday.”
Gough suggested what other Wednesday spinoffs could entail.
“You’ve got Fester, you’ve got young Gomez and Morticia potentially which we talk about in the show,” Gough said. “So it just feels these are all places you could go in that world and explore. The beauty is you have Thing who can be in all of it. He’s like your R2-D2 of the whole universe.”
Thing could get his own ‘Wednesday’ spinoff too
Thing is in every episode of Wednesday. Victor Dorobantu provides the hand, but Millar said a prequel could show the rest of his body.
“I will say because Thing became Tim [Burton]’s favorite character, we have spent more time talking about Thing than any other character in the show,” Millar said. “We had this amazing Romanian magician we cast as Thing because we wanted to make sure that it was a real hand whenever possible. So it actually gives it such life and personality that I think that’s something that we consider the secret sauce of the show. He’s Wednesday’s confidant and their relationship feels like the emotional heart of the show in many ways. We’ll do our Thing spinoff as well, no.”
Early episodes of Wednesday joke about the rest of Thing’s body. However, Millar reminds viewers that Thing was more than a hand in the Charles Addams cartoons.
“In Charles Addams original New Yorker cartoons, Thing is actually a real man,” Millar said. “You see him as this neanderthal in the shadows lurking. So the Thing that we know as just the hand is a creation of the ’60s TV show. We love it. We couldn’t give up the idea of Thing as just the disembodied hand. That was too iconic and amazing.”
