Wednesday Addams

Wednesday Addams began as a member of the macabre family created by cartoonist Charles Addams for *The New Yorker*. The characters appeared in cartoons before they had the familiar names used on television. Wednesday’s name, drawn from the nursery-rhyme line “Wednesday’s child is full of woe,” suited the solemn daughter whose tastes set her apart from conventional children.

Lisa Loring played Wednesday in the 1964–66 television series *The Addams Family*. In that version, Wednesday lived with her parents, Gomez and Morticia, and her brother Pugsley in the family’s peculiar mansion. Loring’s Wednesday was often gentle and polite despite her interest in unsettling things, including her pet spider, Homer. The contrast between her manners and her family’s idea of normality was central to the show’s comedy.

Christina Ricci gave the character a sharper, more deadpan edge in the films *The Addams Family* (1991) and *Addams Family Values* (1993). In the second film, Wednesday and Pugsley are sent to Camp Chippewa after their attempts to dispose of their new baby brother, Pubert. Wednesday resists the camp’s compulsory cheerfulness. During its Thanksgiving pageant, she breaks from the assigned script to deliver a speech criticizing the story being performed. The scene became one of the character’s best-known screen moments.

Other adaptations have allowed Wednesday to grow older. In the stage musical *The Addams Family*, which opened on Broadway in 2010, she is in love with Lucas Beineke. Her wish to bring his ordinary family to dinner drives the musical’s plot and creates a rare conflict between Wednesday’s private life and her loyalty to the Addams household.

Jenna Ortega plays a teenage Wednesday in Netflix’s *Wednesday*, which premiered in 2022. After an incident involving piranhas at her previous school, she is sent to Nevermore Academy, a school attended by students with unusual abilities. There she shares a room with Enid Sinclair, a werewolf whose colorful personality clashes with Wednesday’s preference for black and white. Wednesday investigates murders near the town of Jericho while learning more about her emerging psychic visions and her parents’ past. Ricci also appears in the series, playing teacher Marilyn Thornhill rather than reprising her earlier role.

Across these versions, Wednesday is recognizably an Addams, but her part in the story changes: a quietly strange child in the sitcom, a formidable opponent of manufactured happiness in the films, and the central investigator of a mystery at Nevermore.