Wednesday showrunners Miles Millar and Alfred Gough discuss bringing a more classic-looking Gomez Addams to the Netflix series. Marking Tim Burton’s television directorial debut, Wednesday looks set to reintroduce the Addams Family to a whole new audience. The upcoming series, which is due to release later this year, will shift the focus onto the Addams family daughter, Wednesday, played by You and Scream (2022) star Jenna Ortega.
Alongside Ortega, Wednesday will see Catherine Zeta-Jones take on the role of the iconic Addams family matriarch, Morticia, while Luis Guzmán will play her devoted husband Gomez. Isaac Ordonez will play Wednesday’s younger brother, Pugsley, with the show set to take a closer look at the dynamics of this eccentric family. A recent trailer for Wednesday offered some exciting teases of what’s to come when the series finally drops, as well as glimpses of this new Addams family in all their gothic glory.
While in conversation with Vanity Fair, Millar and Gough open up about the creative process behind bringing Gomez to life in Wednesday, as well as working with renowned director, Burton. The creators reveal that Burton was interested in Gomez’s appearance aligning with more classic depictions of the character, where he is considerably shorter than Morticia. Millar shares that while Wednesday‘s Gomez still has the “classic ingredients” of previous iterations of the character, Guzmán brings something “very different” to the role. Check out the quote below:
Gough: He wanted the silhouette to look more like the Charles Addams cartoons, which is Gomez shorter than Morticia, versus the kind of suave Raul Julia version in the movies.
Millar: He’s also incredibly debonair and romantic, and I think he has all those classic ingredients of the Gomez that we’ve seen come before, but he brings something also very different.
As Gough recalls, the role of Gomez was previously played by Raul Julia in both 1991’s The Addams Family and its 1993 sequel, The Addams Family Values. Prior to this, the role was originated on-screen by John Astin in The Addams Family sitcom from the 1960s, though both of these appearances saw Gomez depicted in a way that differed from Charles Addams’ classic drawings of the character. Though Wednesday, naturally, draws on the same source material as these previous productions, Millar and Gough have stated that the series is far from a reboot of the Addams Family franchise, but rather its own thing entirely.
From what’s been revealed of Wednesday so far, it’s clear the series will deviate from what audiences already expect from the Addams family, so it’s understandable this change to Gomez’s look was important to Burton. Much like the more recent animated version of Gomez in 2019’s The Addams Family, which also stuck closely to the cartoons for inspiration, this more accurate look will bring a different sort of sophistication to the character that audiences will likely be very excited to see Guzmán bring to life on screen. With no confirmed release date for Wednesday just yet, many are hoping for an update on the arrival of this new Addams family soon.
