Creators Al Gough and Miles Millar revealed their influences for the world of Wednesday Addams.
Since the release of Tim Burton’s new Netflix series Wednesday, the show has earned plenty of praise for its performances as well as its fresh take on the iconic Addams Family. As noted by The Hollywood Reporter, the most recent adaptation of The Addams Family has a truly unique concept compared to its prior conceptions, focusing on just one member of the spooky and kooky family instead of the whole gang. Recently, Wednesday creators Al Gough and Miles Millar took the time to chat with THR about their inspirations for a modernized Addams Family, the character of Wednesday, and the world of Jericho.
When asked what drew the pair to the character Wednesday, Gough stated, “It was a character that we all really loved, and nobody had spent a lot of time with. And it’s a character we’d only seen really as a 10-, 11-, 12-year-old, who is part of a family and would have a funny line in the scene, but we didn’t know much about her. Her sort of fearlessness and her ability to always be herself with something, that was interesting, and we thought, well, ‘What if she was a teenage girl? And then what if you took her out of the family and put her in boarding school, which is ostensibly a new family? How would she react?'”
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Millar also noted that the pair wanted to “honor” the Addams Family’s roots and took inspiration from their origins. He said, “I think we definitely wanted to honor the legacy of the Addams Family, and I think it’s something that was important that we do, and we always, always, enjoy doing as well. We think it gives a shoutout to the fans. There’s a nostalgia element to the show as well. I think we also went back to the original Charles Addams illustrations. That was certainly something that we talked to Tim about, and he was a huge fan of Charles Addams growing up. Looking at his body of work, it’s so fresh, acerbic, subversive, morbid, fun.”
Millar continued, “There are production design elements we literally ripped out of his panels, which we thought would be a really fun Easter egg for people who do know Charles Addams and can reference that. Even casting Christina Ricci was just something that we felt was such a delicious moment to have the two Wednesdays in a scene together. It’s something we always think it’s a great thing. In Smallville, we had Christopher Reed come in in season one, and it was such an amazing episode. I think it really joins the generations of fans, and it’s something that we definitely feel pleased about and proud of.”
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Al Gough and Miles Miller Wanted To Show the Addams Family’s Latin Roots
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Gough and Miller also touched on another element of the Addams Family that’s unique to their creation, the gang’s unquestionably Latin roots. According to Gough, unlike prior takes on the family, their version clarifies this distinction. Gough said, “Well, it seemed like something that had been alluded to in a lot of other versions, but nobody had ever actually come out and done it. They cast Raul Julia obviously as Gomez in the film, and we just thought it was something that we wanted to lean into more and have as a piece of this new version of Wednesday and to sort of honor that and represent that. So, that’s really where that came from.”
Another influence that had a serious impact on the world of Wednesday Addams was classic detective novels. Miller stated, “Well, just in the classic Agatha Christie detective novels in terms of it feels like she is such an iconic writer, and Wednesday is a budding crime writer as well. Anything from Murder, She Wrote to the Agatha Christie.”
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