Netflix‘s new Addams Family series Wednesday just debuted on the platform this past week and as Jenna Ortega makes her press rounds, she revealed that she purposely didn’t consult Christina Ricci about the titular character.
Ortega follows in the footsteps of Ricci who portrayed the character in 1991’s The Addams Family and the 1993 sequel Addams Family Values.
Ricci does appear on the Netflix reboot as the character Marylin Thornhill and even shares some scenes with Ortega, but the new Wednesday said she didn’t ask for any advice.
“No, I think when she was on set, neither one of us said Wednesday wants to each other,” said Ortega said in an interview with costar Emma Myers for MTV News. “I don’t think she wanted to get in the way of my performance and feel like she was overbearing.”
She added: “And then I felt like I didn’t want to pull up something that she did 30 years ago, for one, the sake of my own benefit, but two, I didn’t want to rip her off. And I didn’t want to be too much like her.”
Ortega said that the Wednesday series is totally different from the 90’s movies that Barry Sonnenfeld directed.
“Our show has superpowers and outcasts and evil ghost pilgrims,” she said. “So they’re two very different people our Wednesdays, I think. Our characters in the show are polar opposites. They have a sweet little relationship.”
In the same interview, Ortega told Myers that she “felt a lot of pressure to do it right” because Wednesday is “such a beloved character.”
“I’ve never played someone who’s been done before. So I think that that was a really interesting thing for me,” said the actress. “I have a lot of respect for the character, we’ve never spent as much time with Wednesday on camera before, I think there’s gonna be some more depth or some more emotional range that we haven’t really seen from her before.”
Watch Ortega’s full interview below but BEWARE OF SPOILERS!
