The Addams family is meant to be a satirical portrayal of the typical 20th-century American family who finds the macabre delightful and not at all concerning. Exactly this became the reason behind its charm on the people today. Tim Burton’s Wednesday may have focused on the outcast teenager, but the “delight in macabre” remains and was in fact considered to be even more horrific in the series compared to its previous adaptations.
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Speaking with Indiewire, Wednesday co-creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar share that Netflix initially wanted to cut some of Jenna Ortega’s lines in fear of them being too morbid for the audiences. This alarmed the showrunners, with Millar expressing their relief that Netflix did not cut the iconic lines that make Wednesday, Wednesday. Check out their comments below:
“Netflix was always supportive and the executives were huge Addams Family fans, [but] we still did have executives wanting to cut some lines.” Gough says, explaining that one of the ‘darkest’ lines the company wanted to cut was Enid (Emma Myers) encouraging Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) to “take a stab at being social” (as a metaphor, of course), to which Wednesday responds with being fond of stabbing.
Millar adds, “That’s the whole point of the character. To lose that or dilute that is a betrayal of the character.”
Although one of the first teasers we got of Wednesday in the trailer was admittedly dark, the scene where she unleashed the bags of piranhas into the school’s swimming pool to avenge her brother from bullies, this would have been Christina Ricci’s Wednesday’s response in the 1991 The Addams Family film and no one would have batted an eye on it.
Simply put, it is because of the modern setting the show used that emphasized its morbidness which makes it all the more frightening. However, the showrunners made it clear that getting rid of this would not be doing Wednesday Addams any favor. It is exactly the macabre that makes the show all the more unique to its audiences today. Add to that the fact that Tim Burton directed the show, which wouldn’t have made sense if they had censored the dark humor.
“We always say the tone of the show is really the Tim Burton tone. It all feels very accessible to the large audience while still feeling kind of anti.”
Wednesday Season 1 is available to stream on Netflix.
ALSO READ: Wednesday Showrunner Reveals How [Spoilers] Has Always Been the Big Bad of the Show
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