The 30th anniversary of the original big screen outing of The Addams Family has brought out a few stories from cast, and recently it was Christina Ricci’s turn to reminisce about the movie that became her breakout role at the age of 11. Ricci, who played Wednesday Addams, revealed in an interview with Bloody Disgusting that her audition for the movie was film’s excessively bloody school play scene, and she was gleefully happy to say that it was one of the best things she has done in her entire career, while noting that it was very rare to allow children in movies to be so gruesome.
Based on the cartoon strips of Charles Addams, The Addams Family went through numerous iterations on the small screen before making it to a feature film in 1991, including a 1964 TV series and a 70s animated series. The movie went on to have two sequels, one of which saw the original cast returning, and a stage musical based on it. A whole new animated reboot made its debut in 2019, with a sequel arriving in October this year, and the new spin-off live-action series Wednesday, which comes from Tim Burton, is currently in production for Netflix.
While many had hoped that Christina Ricci would have some role to play in the new series, but it seems that is not to be, but the actress clearly has good memories about working on the original film, which also starred Raul Julia, Angelica Huston and Christopher Lloyd.
“That’s one of my favorite things I ever shot in my entire 30-plus-year career. That was my audition scene. I loved it. Nobody ever asks children to do this… I thought that in itself was super fun. And then when we got to the day, we were doing the scene… we did fencing training leading up to it. That was so fun. We had tubes running up our legs, and I had that prosthetic… and the tube of blood would come and shoot out of it. So he had a tube and arm that would just… thud, to the ground. And then the blood spurted, and the whole thing.”
Although the movie was not short of issues in its production, including rewrites and financial issues, the outcome was a hugely successful film, both in critically and commercial terms. The film didn’t hold back when it came to the comical gore and blood, including the scene in which the Addams’ children take part in an abridged version of Hamlet that sees the audience being drenched in fake blood to the delight of the rest of the family.
Throughout both the film and the sequel, Addams Family Values, Ricci brings a performance that has led to her being cited by many as the definitive version of Wednesday with her deadpan delivery of some brilliant one liners as she heads off to dismember her brother or perform some other darkly humorous pastime. How new Wednesday actress Jenna Ortega will compare in the new Netflix series, as comparisons will always come, is something we will have to wait and find out, but regardless, we will always have Ricci’s original big screen outing to fall back on.
Source: movieweb.com