See Fred Armisen As Uncle Fester In Netflix’s Wednesday
Fred Armisen will play Uncle Fester in the Netflix Addams Family series Wednesday.
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The upcoming Netflix supernatural comedy horror series Wednesday has added a comedy legend to its cast, with Saturday Night Live alumnus Fred Armisen joining as the Addams Family’s Uncle Fester. Netflix recently released a trailer for Wednesday showing a little bit more of the action of the series, including appearances by Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen) and Christina Ricci as an original character named Marylin Thornhill. The series will follow Jenny Ortega as Wednesday Addams as she attends a school named Nevermore Academy and investigates a number of dark, yet humorous mysteries.
The Netflix version of Wednesday Addams is a teenager, as opposed to her usual portrayal as a pre-adolescent child. Jenny Ortega plays the eldest child of the Addams Family, the infamous clan of macabre, death-obsessed, yet loving and close-knit weirdos, who is now attending a boarding school that seems to be haunted by a demonic monster. This actually seems to be exactly the kind of thing that an Addams Family member would love, but as Netflix aptly displays, Wednesday specifically likes nothing so much as being very, very serious.
Netflix first announced that acclaimed spooky director Tim Burton would helm an Addams Family project all the way back in 2020, which eventually resulted in an eight-episode Wednesday series. Tim Burton co-created the series along with Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (who will co-showrun the series) and will direct four episodes. Frequent Tim Burton collaborator Danny Elfman joined the Netflix series to compose an original theme at the end of December 2021, and will also score Wednesday.
It is notable that Netflix managed to score Christina Ricci for Wednesday, considering the actress portrayed the character in two highly successful Barry Sonnenfeld Addams Family films in the 1990s. The role helped launch Christina Ricci to stardom, which she followed with the family ghost movie Casper and then transitioned to more adult roles like Buffalo ‘66 and Black Snake Moan. More recently, Christina Ricci has received acclaimed for her role on the breakout Showtime series Yellowjackets, where she plays the adult version of an unhinged character played as a teen by Sammi Hanratty.
The Netflix series also stars Luis Guzman as Gomez Addams, Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Addams, Riki Lindhome as Dr. Valerie Kinbott, and Game of Thrones star Gwendoline Christine as Larissa Weems. It is currently unknown whether Netflix plans for Wednesday to be a limited series or has an eye toward future seasons, but likely much of that will depend on the popularity of the show. Miles Millar and Alfred Gough said the ambition of the show was to make it feel like an “eight-hour Tim Burton movie,” so we will just have to see how it goes with that.
Netflix is scheduled to release Wednesday on November 23, presumably to keep that spooky Halloween feeling going for the people that need something to hold them through Thanksgiving. In addition to Wednesday, you can also see Fred Armisen as a less bald character on another comedy horror series, HBO’s Los Espookys.
