Wednesday

Wednesday is one of the most popular Netflix shows of all time, and it helped make Jenna Ortega a star. It takes the breakout Addams Family character Wednesday Addams and breaks her out of her home environment. Gomez (Luis Guzmán) and Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) pack her off to their alma mater, the gloomy, gothy Nevermore Academy, and she’s soon drawn into the investigation of a series of grisly murders. Wednesday is about to return for a second season, so today we are revisiting our conversation about the show. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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  Wednesday is one of the most popular Netflix shows of all time, and it helped make Jenna Ortega a star. It takes the breakout Addams Family character Wednesday Addams and breaks her out of her home environment. Gomez and Morticia pack her off to their alma mater, the gloomy, gothy, nevermore academy, school for outcasts like her. Soon, she's drawn into the investigation of a series of grisly murders and is set by psychic visions, mean girls, and one seriously bubbly roommate. The series is about to return for a second season, so we thought it was the perfect time to revisit our conversation about the show. I'm Glen Weldon, and today in this encore episode of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're talking about Wednesday.

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  Joining me today is writer Ella Saron, author of the book Viva Lola Espinoza. Hello, Ella.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  Hi, thank you so much for having me.

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  It's great to have you because I need to talk about this show. Wednesday stars Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Adams, the only daughter in a beloved family of freaks created by cartoonist Charles Adams in 1938. But this take on the character grows most directly from the death-obsessed, hilariously deadpan version played by Christina Ricci in a couple of Adams family films. Iconic, I would say, Adams family films in the early 90s. Ricci shows up in Wednesday, as do Wednesday's parents, Gomez and Morticia, played here by Louis Guzman and Catherine Zeta-Jones. But the series focuses on Wednesday's turbulent life at Nevermore Academy, a school for magical creatures like werewolves and sirens. Wednesday's chirpy roommate Enid is played by Emma Sinclair,

• 3:22Speaker 01

  her chief rival Bianca by Joy Sunday. And Hunter Doohan and Percy Hines-White play a couple of potential love interests. There's a monster in the woods outside the school, dismembering folk. There's a secret society. There's a mystery involving Wednesday's parents. There's dances and boat races. And did we mention the school's principal is played by Gwendolyn Christie? Because that happens too. Wednesday was created by Alfred Goff and Miles Malar, the team behind Smallville. Tim Burton is an executive producer. He also directed four episodes of its eight-episode season. Wednesday, as I say, is streaming on Netflix. Ella, like most Americans, you are a fan of the Wednesday Adams character. What did you think of this take?

• 4:01Speaker 03

  Oh, gosh. So I do need to back up and say that I have been in love with the Adams family, I think, since a babysitter showed me the VHS. Those movies are campy. They're iconic, especially if you're a really quiet little girl. And, you know, people get, they're like, "You're not so cute. You're very quiet. You're very serious. You're very Wednesday." And I latched on to that at a very young age. And so I've been obsessed with the Adams family and with Wednesday specifically. Since as long as I can remember. So when they first announced this show and the premise, I was actually a little skeptical because like you said, there's a lot going on that really dives into the supernatural. And my understanding of the Addams Family has always been that they're

• 4:46Speaker 03

  just weird. These are just some weird goths living their life in a very suburban place. And that satire is what makes them so great. So I was a little skeptical going in, but as the show and the episodes picked up and the world building, which was so great and really comprehensive, kind of laid itself out, they hooked me in and I was like, okay, I get, I get what's happening here. This is an update. My protection over this IP and my love and nostalgia, I can suspend that for right now to understand and appreciate what they're doing here.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  I agree that there's some stuff to like here, but I think when it comes to Jenna Ortega's central performance, there's a lot to love. Just imagine this whole thing is on her shoulders. And I think she nails it because as much as I also love the Addams Family films and like any self-respecting middle-aged gay man, I am off book on Addams Family values, chapter and verse. The Wednesday character there is a flavoring agent, you know, she's not the main course. So she can afford the monotone affect because especially in those amazing summer camp scenes, she's such a stark contrast to everyone around her. Plus, and I think this turns out to be a huge factor for me, everything that comes out of her mouth is written by Paul

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Rudnick, right? So it's very funny. Here she's the focus over eight hour long episodes and the environment around her is pretty much just as goth as she is. So she can't just do what she does in the movie. She's got to show us layers and she has to do that without violating, you know, the central organizing principle of this character. I do not envy that task as an actor. I think Ortega nails it. I think she does this flat effect, yet she's also able to show us. Just with her eyes, when something or someone actually reaches her, plus there's a dance scene that she has that's just fantastic. But I gotta say, it's that central performance that kept me going because everything around her I found just pretty flat and familiar. And if we weren't doing it for the show, I think I would have bailed

• 6:43Speaker 01

  on this pretty early. This setting is my deal breaker. This setting, man, it is the year 2022, and we're still doing YA School for Magic. We're still doing not warts. I get that it's a genre, I do, but why it gotta feel so generic? I mean, the dialogue here, for the most part, is, and I say this with love, WB superhero show level. And that's okay. Some actors can nail that if they have the right delivery. If you toss off a B- minus joke or reference, it can work. But if you lean into it, as so many of them are doing here, you call too much attention to it, it just feels sweaty. The stakes are pretty low, as they are often in YA School for Magic stuff, because you gotta keep this

• 7:23Speaker 01

  kid in the school long past when they would have gotten expelled, or even arrested. So there's a lot of scenes of one more infraction from you, and, you know, those scenes. Or you have Wednesday working with local law enforcement in the way that local law enforcement tends not to work with amateur teen sleuths. The show calls it out, to its credit, but it still does it. So I was finding a lot around the central character just too flat.

• 7:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I totally see what you're saying there. I was just like, we've been here before at this small town that's being besieged by murders. We've seen this

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  Yeah.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  a trillion times. And on some level, like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But I, one of the beauties of the original movies is that these are just these weirdos amid a bunch of preps. And so I was like, how are they going to contrast that if, to your point, everybody is as goth as she is? She is still slightly more goth than everybody else, because she gets some sort of special license to have a black and gray uniform while everyone else is wearing purple. I will say, by the way, the outfits were phenomenal in a way that wasn't actually, like, costumey, except she did wear Prada monoliths. And I was like, I'm sorry, what? What's going on? She's wearing Prada's?

• 8:45Speaker 01

  It's a wealthy family.

• 8:46Speaker 03

  They are. They are inexplicably wealthy. There's it's that's never explained. I did kind of miss the pearls and the cardigans that are central, I think, to the other movies because there is that contrast and Wednesday in the other movies is more of like a straight man character. She's she has the deadpan lines, but it's everybody else being ridiculous around her. And so I think Jenna did a really good job of giving just enough emotion when she needed to and then like pulling it back immediately. But there is always going to be that nostalgia of like, okay, I this is also reinforcing why I love the original so much as as I do.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Well, let's talk about that because I think what you're talking about there is the direction as much as anything else and the direction of those early episodes. When I saw that Tim Burton director credit, I was like, let's do this because of course it seems inevitable. It seems overdue. Like this is a property made for Tim Burton, right? I mean, it's amazing to me that he hasn't done this before. But then again, what is Edward Scissorhands but an Addams Family movie, basically. And yet what you get is just something that looks like everything else on Netflix. Same camera aspect, same ratio, same color palette. I don't necessarily think of Burton as an actor's director, but he does pull that amazing Ortega performance out of her. I think that's mostly her, but a little bit of him. But the show looks really flat. And look, I understand the difference between film and television. They're different media. They have vastly

• 10:11Speaker 01

  different resources. Even if you're talking Netflix money, it's still film has a lot more money. And I'm not trying to conflate production, design and directing here. I understand they're two different things. But man, if you told me that a couple of Addams Family films directed by Barry Sonnenfeld would look and feel a hell of a lot more like Tim Burton than an Addams Family show that's actually directed by Tim Burton, I wouldn't have believed you.

• 10:37Speaker 03

  Right. So my favorite Batman movie is Batman Returns and that's Tim Burton. It's Christmas Batman in my house. So tis the season. But that feels like an Addams Family set as well. Like that feels right in the canon. And so this did feel a lot more like CW. It felt a lot. I was reminded a lot of Sabrina. It just felt very much in that same vein of like, oh, this is what they're trying to do. This is the hole that they're trying to fill. It felt like more like from the world of Tim Burton than opposed to like a Tim Burton. Tim Burton thing as I know it.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Sure. As the trailers say, from the mind of Tim Burton. Uh, but let me ask you about something. So this series does acknowledge that the Addams Family came to America from Mexico. You got Guzman playing Gomez, you got Ortega playing Wednesday, you got a little later in the season, Fred Armisen showing up as Uncle Fester. Uh, how's that land on you?

• 11:28Speaker 03

  Well, so my favorite tradition of the Addams Family is actually that Raul Julia, who played Gomez Addams in the movies, made the character Latino. If I can nerd out for five seconds, uh, the father in the comic book as made by Charles Addams never had a name. Eventually the TV shows came along and they were like, okay, we have to give him a name. Uh, and they landed on Gomez and he was Castilian Spanish, which is very different from being Latino. That's actually just being Hispanic. Uh, but then by the time that Raul Julia came around and used his accent and used his mannerisms and really just gave a Shakespearean performance to the role.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  And since then, they've leaned into it. Oscar Isaac voiced Gomez in the animated movies and it really does make the characters feel like canonically Latino and there are references to their heritage in the show. There's a quip about Días de Muertos. There's a moment where she's listening to La Llorona, which is an iconic Zapatec song.

• 12:31Speaker 04

  I knew it. Hello, thing.

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  Did you really think my highly trained olfactory sense would pick up on the faint whiff of Neroli and Bergamot in your favorite hand lotion?

• 12:45Speaker 03

  But at the same time, they're very much treating it like it is what it is. There is no plot line of, hey, the Addams is our Latino. And so I personally liked it and to see that continuity also with Fred Armisen as Uncle Fester, it also added that level of normalization, I would want to say. Whereas when I was a little kid and I saw Raul Julia and I was like, oh, here's a weirdo Latino, kind of like my dad.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  This Gomez is far more muted, but it definitely still had that moment of like, okay, this is Latino daddy daughter time. Let me like get into my feelings and text my father.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Well, let's talk about the mom, too, because I think one thing this version also adds to the canon is it creates a real sense of friction and resentment between Wednesday and her mom. And I was wondering what that's doing there besides just adding kind of Y18 angst. But what it's effectively doing is it's isolating her as a character even more because, of course, in the films, you know, when she's home, she's home. The Addams Family sticks together. It's the Addams Family versus the world. And here, by introducing that split, did that work for you?

• 13:52Speaker 03

  I thought it was a necessary split, I would almost want to say, because, again, this show is very different from the movies in that the movies are really the Gomez and Morticia show.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  And this is the Wednesday show. So creating that divide drives Wednesday away from home a little bit more. And Catherine Zeta-Jones, who I must note is not Latina.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 14:14Speaker 03

  She plays a Morticia that is far less sardonic than Angelica Huston's. And it's filled with a lot more remorse and a little bit of regret, I would want to say. I don't have a teenage daughter, but I would imagine my mother at that point felt a lot of the feelings and the griefs and sorrows that she felt. I do think that they were very smart in not trying to create everything note for note from the original.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think it's tough to kind of wipe those movies out of the, out of your memory as you're watching this. Was there anything else you wanted to hit? Anything specific we didn't get to?

• 14:50Speaker 03

  I do have to say the classmates dynamic felt a little thin sometimes. Some of the characters felt really flat. One of her classmates, who is the brooding artist in the sea of outcasts, like, how much more can you be an outcast? He felt very uneven, and I wish they could have done more with him, and that really would have sold. The potential love triangle a little bit more. I gotta be honest, though, I was really rooting for the normie romance. I thought that was really cute and I was like, OK, I get it. Now I understand what it looks like when anybody who isn't as goth as me dates me. And I'm like, I'm so sorry. This is weird.

• 15:34Speaker 03

  I'm the little goth black rain cloud. Here I am. And I was really rooting for that one. They got, they got me. That plot twist I did not see coming. I will say that.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree. Well, we want to know what you think about Wednesday. Find us at facebook.com slash P C H H. And that brings us to the end of our show. Ellis Aron, thanks for being here.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Of course. And of course, thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. If you've got a second and you're so inclined, please sign up for our newsletter at npr.org slash pop culture newsletter. This episode was produced by Ramal Wood and edited by Jessica Reedy. And Hello Come In provides our theme music, which you are glowering menacingly to right now. I'm Glen Weldon, and we'll see you all tomorrow.

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