Netflix's Wednesday: a meh adaptation of The Addams Family (dont kill me)
(Mina snapping fingers) – Hello, my conspiracy Ravens, welcome back. If you haven’t noticed, I’m in a new space. If you didn’t watch my last video, I mentioned that I was moving, and so, this is my new apartment or just a piece of it. I’m in my bedroom, obviously. I am planning to redecorate my video filming space, so this is not really where I wanna record all my videos, but it is, for now, until I get that space all together, and I’m really excited about that. Anyways, today I wanted to do a fun little video on
the new TV show, “Wednesday,” that dropped on Netflix last month, and it’s based on “The Addams Family.” So, of course, we’re going to do a deep dive into “Addams Family” lore, and see how “Wednesday” holds up in “The Addams Family” canon. But first, a word from our sponsor. (Mina snapping fingers) (phone clunking) Thank you RHINOSHIELD for sponsoring this video. RHINOSHIELD is known for creating super protective and customizable phone cases and accessories. RHINOSHIELD offers tons of customization options, case styles, colors, print designs, you name it, so you can create a case that feels fully you, and
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available for all iPhones and a lot of Android flagship devices. Click on the link in my description and use the code: MINALE to get 20% off your case in the first week and 10% after. (eerie music) So, I wanna start with a history bit, because I think to really understand my POV, we have to go into what “The Addams Family” is all about. So, “The Addams Family” was created by cartoonist, Charles Addams, making their first appearance in a comic panel in “The New Yorker” in 1938. Charles, who also signed his name as Chas under his
little illustrations, made $85 from this cartoon, which is about $1,797 today. So what’s the inspiration behind this cartoon family? Well, Charles himself was born in 1917 in a loving New Jersey home. He once told Linda H. Davis, who’s the author of “Charles Addams: A Cartoonist’s Life,” “It would be more interesting, perhaps, if I had a ghastly childhood, chained to an iron bed, and thrown a can of Alpo every day. But I’m one of those strange people who actually had a happy childhood.” But despite this, he did love the macabre, of course, which, according to “Cambridge
Dictionary,” is a word used to describe something that is very strange and unpleasant, because it is connected with death or violence. For example, Charles decorated his apartment with medieval working crossbows, and for his coffee table, he used a Civil War-era embalming table. Davis explains the table still had the rusted metal headrest attached at one end, and Charles loved to point out a mysterious stain that would be around the kidney area of a person laying on it. Let me know how you would feel if you were a guest at Charles Addams’ house, and he just puts
your tea and cookies on this embalming table. He ended up going to New York City’s Grand Central School of Art, sold a cartoon to “The New Yorker” in 1932, which was a sketch of a window washer, and it only went up from there. Davis explains, “Addams is one of those rare people who made a living throughout his entire life in the arts. He was with ‘The New Yorker’ until the end, and it afforded him a glamorous, sophisticated lifestyle. He wasn’t filthy rich, but he had an apartment overlooking the MoMA sculpture garden, drove a Bugatti Bentley
and a Bentley, dated Jackie Kennedy not long after the assassination, and was always at the top of everyone’s dinner party list.” To be honest, I feel like Charles Addams is literally, or was literally, living my dream life. He allegedly proposed to Jackie Kennedy, which she rejected, allegedly telling him, “Well, I couldn’t marry you. What will we talk about at the end of the day, cartoons?” So, yes, Addams drew a lot. He worked for “TV Guide.” He also retouched crime scene photos for “True Detective.” Over the course of his life, he drew about 1,300 “New Yorker”
cartoons, and only 50 of them were featuring “The Addams Family,” and this family wasn’t even called “The Addams Family” at the time. The name was solidified later when the comic panel was picked up for a TV show in 1964. The humor depicted in these comic panels could be described as a black humor today, which, according to “Cambridge Dictionary,” is defined, “As a humorous way of looking at or treating something that is serious or sad.” The idea of black humor was partially inspired by Sigmund Freud’s 1927, “Der Humor,” in which Freud discusses a criminal who is
led to the gallows on a Monday and exclaims, “What a way to start the week!” Freud uses the term Gallows humor, and explains that it is a tool to overcome a hopeless situation by asserting control over it. Gallows humor is the ego’s refusal to confront reality. As an example of this, Davis told “NPR” that Charles Addams was actually a very fearful person. – He was fearful as a child, he was very claustrophobic, and he struggled with that fear all his life. He had his fear of snakes, and so, he drew them constantly in his cartoons,
these enormous snakes that were about 20 feet long, and it was the most psychologically smart thing to do, because by drawing out his fears and by making fun of them, he diffused them. – By the 1960s, when “The Addams Family” TV show premiered, black humor was everywhere. Black humor spoke to the ills of society and with the threat of the bomb, the escalation of the Vietnam War, and the societal rest in the U.S., yeah, it’s no wonder that the sixties was a breeding ground for this type of comedy. And, as I said before, “The Addams
Family” originally were nameless in the comics in “The New Yorker.” So after the show was green lit, Charles suggested the names Rapelli and Gomez for the father figure. Prefering Rapelli, which was a word play for the term repellent, but he ultimately left the decision to John Astin who would play the character in the show. Obviously, we know that John went with Gomez. Charles also pitched Pubert for the son, but network sensors thought it was two risque because it was clearly a play on the word puberty. So, instead, he named him Pugsley, after a stream in
the Bronx. The movie, “Addams Family Values,” does reference this by naming the newborn addition to the family, Pubert. Morticia was named after a mortician, but there’s also a myth that goes around that she was based on Charles’s first wife, Barbara Jean Day, because they look a little bit alike. But the reality is he met Barbara in 1942 and first drafted up Morticia in 1933. The photo of him allegedly sketching Barbara in his living room was staged for “Life Magazine.” If anything, it’s just a coincidence that, not just Barbara, but all three of his wives resembled
Morticia in some way. He even told “People” magazine, “I married women who looked like Morticia. She’s my ideal.” As for Wednesday, the story goes that Charles met up with actress, Joan Blake, for a drink at P.J. Clarke’s bar in Manhattan. He had no idea what he was gonna name this-13 year-old daughter that he draws in his comic panels. Blake suggested that he named her Wednesday after the 19th century nursery rhyme, “Monday’s Child.” In 2018, she recalled, “He made me laugh and told me that “The Addams Family” was being made into a television show and that
he had no name for the pallid little girl with the deadpan expression and signature pigtails. I said, ‘Wednesday.’ ‘Wednesday’s child is full of woe.'” The Netflix show does make a reference to this name origin. – It comes from a line from my favorite nursery rhyme, “Wednesday’s child is full of woe.” – For the sixties show, comedic writer, director, and series producer, Nat Perrin, dialed down the darkness of the comics, and instead amped up the family zaniness and insanity. For example, cousin Itt and Thing, the two strangest characters in “The Addams Family” universe, I’d argue, were
actually not prominent characters in the comics, but became prominent characters in the show. And, fun fact, the actor who played cousin Itt, Felix Silla, noted in 2014, “All the guys on the set smoked. They just dropped their butts and stepped on them. The producers worried that I might step on a smoldering cigarette and go up in flames, so they gave me a flame-retardant synthetic hair.” As for what Charles thought about the sixties show, Davis says, “Charles was up-and-down on the television show. He certainly enjoyed what ‘The Addams Family’ did for his earning power, but he
said the characters were half as evil. To be honest, he didn’t even really watch it, because on Friday nights he was usually out to dinner or on a date.” “The Addams Family” TV show was part of a wave of magic-coms, which was like a genre name, a genre portmanteau, merging the family sitcom with magical fantasy iconography. These included “The Munsters,” “Bewitched,” and “I Dream of Jeannie.” While most domestic sitcoms of this era idealized the white picket fence, American, nuclear family, middle class culture, the magic-com subverted the idea of suburban conformity. “The Addams Family” challenged middle
class suburbia, criticizing it for its lack of tolerance and individuality. In the show, the Addams view themselves as the normal ones, and it’s everyone else in their community who views them as strange. But despite their objective abnormality, the audience is supposed to root for them against the rest of society. For example, in the episode, “Morticia and the Psychiatrist,” Gomez and Morticia consults an expert, because their son, Pugsley, is exhibiting unnatural behavior. This unnatural behavior is actually normal boy behavior, aka he’s prancing around the house in a Boy Scout’s uniform, and he’s opting to play with
a puppy, rather than with his octopus, Aristotle. (Morticia gasping) – Gomez! – What? – He’s out there playing with it. (audience laughing) – These personality changes are considered wrong, and throughout the entire episode, Morticia and Gomez are struggling to find a way to revert their son back to his authentic self. At the same time, this is the 1960s, so “The Addams Family” does conform a little bit, to a degree, to the predominant ideas of suburbia at the time. For example, Morticia and Gomez are extremely nurturing and extremely supportive parents. They’re also very monogamous and devoted
to each other. You could even argue that they’re a little too devoted for what was considered normal on television. – Tish, let’s go down to the cave. (audience laughing) – Oh, that we save for special occasions, bubala. – Oh, you know what you do when you call me that. – Well, it just slipped out. – The important thing is Gomez was not this Casanova, and Morticia was still doing these housewifely chores, like knitting garments and feeding the plants. The TV show was canceled after two years and 64 episodes, but there were attempts, relatively soon after,
to revive the franchise. For example, the family took a guest spot in “The New Scooby-Doo Movies” in 1972, because, I don’t know, “Scooby-Doo” featured a lot of crossovers. I remember Batman and Robin were in “Scooby-Doo,” Johnny Bravo was in “Scooby-Doo.” So, yeah, I guess it makes sense that “The Addams Family” would also just turn up animated in “Scooby-Doo.” The success of this crossover special actually led Hanna-Barbera to produce a cartoon series called “The Addams Family” in 1973. The show follows the family on a cross country road trip in a camper van that resembles their home.
Because it was the seventies, and everyone, for some reason, had a camper van in the seventies. And, fun fact, 10-year-old, Jody Foster, voiced Pugsley in the TV show. Also in 1973, ABC made a pilot for a variety show version of “The Addams Family,” with a completely different cast. But, in the end, the pilot was aired as a special, and didn’t become a full series. Then, in 1977, most of the original cast reprised the roles in the movie “Halloween with the New Addams Family.” “The Addams Family” wouldn’t come back until 1991, when director, Barry Sonnenfeld, directed
a live action adaptation called, of course, “The Addams Family.” For millennials and zoomers, I feel like this adaptation is the most definitive, and the first one that comes to mind when we think of this franchise. It was so successful, making $191 million worldwide in the box office, on a $30 million budget that Sonnenfeld directed the sequel in 1993 called “Addams Family Values.” I haven’t seen the seventies versions of “The Addams Family,” but I do think the nineties one stays true to what was established in the sixties. Once again, we have the Addams in their dark
Victorian mansion in the midst of a cookie-cutter, suburban American neighborhood. And again, they participate in typical domestic activities, albeit in their own way. For example, the kids get sent off to school with bag lunches filled with live creatures. Morticia still gardens, but in a greenhouse with blackened windows, and we see her cutting the flowers off the stems, but it has been upgraded because it’s the nineties now, so Gomez and Morticia are able to be a little bit more sensual in front of the camera without the sensors going crazy. They actually make a couple explicit jokes,
which are funny, watching back as an adult. – Last night you were unhinged. You were like some desperate howling demon. – And I think, overall, the movies set a darker tone, like the characters are more explicitly spooky. (eerie music) – One. Two. – Children, what are you doing in there? – Playing. – Wednesday, in particular, is more overtly sinister, and I think that was a good thing overall, because it is more true to what Charles Addams originally intended with his comics. (lightning crackling) After that, we get a series of flop adaptations, another animated TV series
called “The Addams Family” in 1992, which lasted one season, the direct-to-video “Addams Family Reunion” in 1998 with the different cast, and the sitcom, “The New Addams Family,” also in 1998, that only lasted one season. “The Addams Family” starts making a comeback in the 2010s with a Broadway musical that got mixed reviews, and then, finally, in 2019, “The Addams Family” returned in the form of an animated movie that did get 45% on Rotten Tomatoes, but it made $203 million worldwide, which prompted a sequel in 2021. And in the good year of 2022, we got “Wednesday,” which
came out last month, in which we will finally talk about. (sinister music) Warning, there will be spoilers ahead, I’ve given y’all over a month to watch this show, so this is not my fault. So “Wednesday” premiered last month on Netflix, as I said, and became the third most popular English language TV series of all time with 752.52 million hours viewed according to Deadline. So, the thirst for “The Addams Family” is clearly strong. As a disclaimer, because I know some of you are going to be mad at me. – Some of y’all about to be real
mad at me, but it must be said. – This is just my opinion. Please feel free to agree or disagree. I don’t really care. I just enjoy analyzing and discussing the media that I watch. So that’s what we’re doing today. So, for anyone who hasn’t watched the show, and is not planning to watch this show, it was produced by Tim Burton, and he actually directed four of the episodes. The basic promise is that Wednesday Addams, the daughter of “The Addams Family,” gets sent to a private boarding high school called Nevermore Academy, located in the small
town, Jericho. Nevermore is a school for outcasts, aka the term for fantastical creatures like sirens, gorgons, and werewolves. The slang term for humans in this show is “Normie.” Morticia and Gomez, of course, were prominent alumni of the school, along with Edgar Allan Poe, and, throughout the show, Wednesday deals with this complex where she feels like her parents, particularly Morticia, are trying to make her become copies of them. Because high school media loves the whole, “This is not my dream, Mom, this is yours,” trope. – You’re throwing away your dream. – No, Dad, I’m throwing away
yours. – Morticia and Wednesday also have superpowers. Their power is that they get visions of a person’s past and future when they come in contact with said person. The big mystery for this season is that there’s some kind of creature roaming the woods and murdering students, and Wednesday basically turns into Nancy Drew, trying to solve the crime herself. My overall impression was that it’s a teen show, a show about teenagers for teenagers, versus “Euphoria,” which is a show about teenagers for adults. What I consider a teen show is a show that doesn’t take itself too
seriously, with a lot of cringey dialogue that’s reminiscent of the CW. – You know, it’s a small school, and there wasn’t much online about you. Oh, you should really get on Insta, Snapchat, and TikTok. – And I’m not against a teen show. I can indulge. There are some plot holes that are there that I wish they just took a little bit more care patching up. For example, how was Wednesday able to just sidestep the whole throwing piranhas in a pool, and permanently maiming a student without getting sued? I would love to know. They could easily
have just put in a thing about how her grandma hypnotized the administrator, because, I remember, the grandma character, who was not even seen in this movie, so justice for her, but the grandma character does some witchy stuff in the nineties versions. And, to be fair, there’s not a lot of things that make sense in any of “The Addams Family” franchise shows and movies, but, the difference is, I feel like all previous iterations of “The Addams Family” have been very camp. And when something is camp, I’m not really looking for answers, okay? But “Wednesday’s” a show
that takes itself seriously, so it’s hard not to question some of the decisions. One decision I did really like though is to cast a Latina actress as Wednesday. – Wednesday is technically a Latina character, and that’s never been represented. So, for me, anytime that I have an opportunity to represent my community, I want that to be seen. – The original “Addams Family” were not ethnically identified by Charles Addams, but then, when it became a TV show, and John Astin chose Gomez for the name, it basically solidified, at least to Gomez Addams, to have Hispanic ancestry.
And in this show, Uncle Fester, who is, canonically, Gomez’s brother, is played by Fred Armisen, who is half Venezuelan. So, yeah, I did like the extra care in the casting, even with Uncle Fester who is this very ambiguous, gray-looking man. I think it’s nice to have that kind of implication that he is still Latino. In saying that, I wish that they actually would’ve explored that more in this show itself. I assume that at least Gomez Addams has Mexican ancestry because Wednesday makes a reference to Dia de los Muertos. – Ours is in the living room,
more seating for a year long Dia de los Muertos. – But the only fact we know for sure about her family is that they had an ancestor from the 1600s whose name was Goody Addams. And Goody Addams lived in Jericho and had witchy superpowers. But then, Morticia implies that the superpowers are from her side of the family, so I don’t really know what’s going on here. And, also, just a historical pet peeve, as far as I know, Goody was not an actual name that was used in the 1600s. It was more of like a title,
because Goody was short for Goodwife. A woman of higher status would be addressed as mistress, and a woman of lower status would be addressed as Goody. That’s why they were so many Goodys in these historical documents. It wasn’t ’cause they all have the same name. Jenna Ortega was really good, though. I’ll give the series that. I heard that she trained herself to not blink while on screen, which, I love the decision. Very impressive, for sure. As for the other characters, my biggest problem with them is that they really don’t have any kind of character development.
I just didn’t really care about any of the characters outside of “The Addams Family,” except for maybe Principal Weems, who’s played by Gwendoline Christie. Also, fun fact, Weems is actually an original character. She appears in a comic panel as Miss Weems, who acts as the babysitter for the night in the panel, so that was a cute little Easter egg. But for the boys who take up way too much screen time, particularly Xavier and Tyler, I honestly could not give one shit about this love triangle. I have no idea why they even liked Wednesday. That’s not
really clear in the script, especially considering how often she just brushes them off and is just straight up mean to them. – What’d you see? – Who said I was ready to speak with you? – Damn, soon as I walk through the door, I’m getting the third degree. – I know there’s been some discourse on TikTok about who’s shipping who with who. And, I wasn’t really sold on Xavier, but I really could not stand Tyler, mostly because his actor kept doing this thing, this Debby Ryan smile where he was, (giggling) kept making this expression. It
just drove me crazy. I just couldn’t stand it. For Enid, also, who is another major character, I guess. She stays the same the whole time. Her biggest issue is her mom pressuring her about her werewolf transformation, which ends up happening at the end of the series, and it didn’t even feel earned. It was just all very convenient. And even with Wednesday, who does get the most in character development, is just kind of annoying in the show, because she delivers these one-liners, these very snarky, sarcastic one-liners every 10 seconds, and it just grows old very quickly.
– When I look at you, the following emojis come to mind: rope, shovel, hoe. – I get why they do it. They’re clearly building off of Christina Ricci’s portrayal of Wednesday. – Oh, Wednesday’s at that very special age when a girl has only one thing on her mind. – Boys? – Homicide. – But the difference is, in the nineties movies, Christina Ricci was part of an ensemble cast, which means Wednesday was not the main character, she was just a side character that appeared every so often. And so, the lines that she gives are just dropped
in the script at various points, but are not overwhelming. And, honestly, the plots are very unoriginal, and they’re just not very interesting. It’s just very juvenile in how the normies versus outcasts rivalry is supposed to be a stand-in for, I guess, racism ala “Zootopia.” – Outcast, freaks, monsters. Fill in your favorite marginalized group here. – I don’t know, it just doesn’t really go deep with the commentary. Clearly, “Wednesday” does refer to indigenous people and how they are oppressed by colonizers in the show, but I think it would’ve been interesting to see what her perspective and
her reality growing up as a Latina outcast is versus Enid, who grows up as a white outcast, or Bianca who grows up as a black outcast. I think they just could have gone more. And what bothered me also is that I feel like the original Addams wouldn’t care about being murderers, you know? They are just kind of sinister. I don’t think it would’ve been that big of a deal to the innate family that Gomez or Morticia had murdered a man out of passion. I would even go so far as to say that the setting they
chose itself is not really conducive for an “Addams Family” adaptation, because, first of all, Wednesday is removed from her family, when the whole point of “The Addams Family” is that they are a family unit and it really dives into family dynamics. And, also, “The Addams Family” is about creating this juxtaposition between them and the rest of society. So I actually think it would’ve been more interesting for Wednesday to go to a regular boarding school, rather than one full of weirdos, (chuckling) because, in theory, this entire school should be fucking weird. All the students should be
more like Wednesday. That’s the reason why her parents sent her off to the school, so that she could be herself. Not so she could be forced into participating in regular school events that are just coded as gothic. The Poe Cup tournament is just basically a relay school team competition, and the only thing gothic about it is the name, which derives from Edgar Allan Poe, and the uniforms that they choose for themselves. But where’s the creativity in that? Where’s the macabre in that? I think what would’ve been more fun and more realistic for a school like
Nevermore is if they had a school-wide competition where students compete to build the most creative torture device or something, you know? I would’ve liked them to push the envelope a little bit more in the gothic direction, and I would’ve preferred that if they were insistent on doing this gothic academy, for the principal to also be cooler, because, even though I did like Principal Weems somewhat, I felt she was just too preachy when it came to wanting everyone to fit in with the rest of society. ‘Cause that’s not the point of what “The Addams Family” is
about. I think they were afraid of making this TV show too camp. But the problem is “The Addams Family” is camp, and Tim Burton is producing and directing some of the episodes, so why not just lean into that? I want the “Beetlejuice” version of Tim Burton to please stand up. I think, just at the end of the day, everyone’s lazy. Everyone doesn’t wanna take a risk. When creating a new show or a new story, they feel like they have to slap some intellectual property on it, so that they can guarantee streaming numbers. To be honest,
I think if this was just like a regular fantasy high school show, and the character was just like this gothic girl, and it wasn’t directly “Addams Family” related, I would have way less expectations for it, and I probably would’ve enjoyed it more. But, because that wouldn’t make as much money, of course they’re going to take “The Addams Family” and slap it on without taking the care to actually look into what “The Addams Family” is all about. (sinister music) So the costumes were designed by Colleen Atwood, and I love Colleen Atwood. She’s worked on a ton
of movies, including “Memoirs Of A Geisha,” “Chicago,” “Sweeney Todd.” She definitely knows what she’s doing. She’s like a veteran costume designer. (kissing sound) Love her. So let’s start with Wednesday. Wednesday appears in the first episode in her iconic look, a black dress with a white collar and two braided pigtails. It’s a bit more modernized compared to previous renditions. The collar is nice and pointed, the dress has a subtle print, and she’s wearing platform shoes. I love this. I think it’s very true to her character. It’s not anachronistic. She looks straight up like she’s in 2022.
I also think it’s just a really good idea to nod at her legacy straight from the beginning. It’s kind of like, “Yes, we are acknowledging, we are establishing what has come before us, and we’re gonna get ready to show you what awaits you now.” The pointed caller also helps with establishing an aesthetic severity in Wednesday’s character, which Atwood said was purposeful. She noted how Jenna Ortega has a very angelic face, so she opted for more severe cuts rather than flowy ones to sharpen her up. Atwood says, “Wednesday is an angular person in a sense that
you never know what edge you’re going to get when she slings one of her lines. It was just sort of a choice that way for that.” When Wednesday is at Nevermore, she wears a gray and black striped uniform, the colorless version of the standard school uniform. I think that’s great, no notes. Atwood told “Variety” how she went about it. She said, “I wanted a gray and black stripe, but I didn’t really like how they looked in the world, so I ended up having the stripes drawn and painted. We silk-screened all her stripes, so we got
something that was a softer variation on a stripe, which is a fun process as a designer to be able to do. She also told “Harper’s Bazaar” the difficulty in working with black clothing because they tend to look flat when on screen. And she explained how she worked around it, “If you take black and give it a little something so that under the lighting, it becomes this richer black, it won’t go into this dark hole. Morticia’s dress, for instance, is all black, but I was playing around with this technique in all leather and I twisted the
dress, so those side things take the solid black shape to another place and give it more life. And besides using black that was semi-reflective, I used black and white. There’s almost no solid black that’s used. If a character is in a black jacket, for instance, I pair it with a white shirt underneath, so you can see the sleeve peek out of the cuff, so it’s not just a blob of black on the room.” As for Wednesday’s day-to-day look, she mostly wears the same clothes over and over again, which I like, because I don’t think she’s
the fashion type of girl. For her wardrobe, Colleen said that she searched for sixties and seventies, as well as contemporary items, and I think that’s perfect. Wednesday’s original look, even though she was around during the 1940s and fifties, through the work of Charles Addams, her dress with the contrast collar is very reminiscent of mod dresses of the sixties. Personally, though, if I was the costume designer, I would’ve gone for a more dark academia route for her, just because she is an extremely smart girl. We see her speaking Italian and German, we see her writing on
a typewriter, and playing the cello. So, yeah, I think playing into that kind of academic quality in her wardrobe would be a cool way to update and modernize her look. Maybe instead of this checkered vest and sports jacket, I would put her in a plain white shirt with a massive collar, like the ones from Simone Rocha, or think Ganni, or Kika Vargas. It doesn’t have to be a name brand either. Those are just examples for inspiration. But having her in something like that, paired with a black cardigan or black blazer and slacks. I would also
wanna give her Victorian morning jewelry. Once again, it doesn’t have to be real antiques, it could be replicas, but I think something like an antique locket that has human hair in it, or even one of those necklaces that are just made of human hair, or a ring that is made of someone’s tooth. I did really like Wednesday’s Raven Dance dress, which was a vintage Alaïa made of nylon material. This dress actually had some kind of brown tie-dye effect, apparently, which ended up working really well, because it gave the black fabric more dimension, making it less
flat on screen, which is a problem that we just talked about. (chuckling) Colleen Atwood did say she made some alterations, and I really hope that the team preserved the actual Alaïa dress and didn’t touch that, and they just made alterations to the replicas, because it would break my heart if they permanently modified an Alaïa dress. It would just break my heart. And, yes, I do mention that they made replicas, because when Wednesday wears the dress during the scene, there’s this “Carrie” tribute where red paint gets sprinkled all over the students and faculty, so they did
have to make multiples of the costumes that were featured in that sequence, because they had to do multiple takes. Atwood also changed the shape of some of the ruffles from the waist up, so that Jenna Ortega, who is petite, wouldn’t get swallowed by the fabric. She also changed the neckline, because she said the original neckline was, quote, unquote, “strangly.” The only element I think clashes is the collared neckline. I know it’s supposed to play an homage to her collared look, but to me, it just throws off the dress that I wish they just didn’t do
it. Enid is another character that gets a notable wardrobe. She’s Wednesday’s roommate who is very girly, very colorful, and very outgoing. She mostly wears shades of pink and orange and lots and lots of patterns. And I love how Atwood leaned in with the fuzzy textures, like mohair and faux fur, which not only contrasts heavily with Wednesday, but also hints at her werewolf identity. I honestly wouldn’t change anything about Enid. I think she’s dressed perfectly for her character. I think she looks like she’s very much a high schooler, which is ideal. She’s like the more realistic
high school version of Jules from “Euphoria” season one. But, by far, my favorite costume character is drum roll. (Mina slapping hands) ♪ I’m blonde, I’m skinny, I’m rich ♪ – Principal Weems. (chuckling) Which should come as no surprise, because I am a big Hollywood fan, old Hollywood fan, and Principal Weems’ design was based on Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” You can definitely see the resemblance here, particularly in the vintage hairdo and the pistachio-colored suit. Atwood explained why she went for a suited up look for Weems, “I kind of went with the thought of the people that
run those kinds of schools. They’re almost like politicians who work the world around them, so they have to present themselves in a business-like way. At the school, you have to come on like you know what you’re doing.” I think going the Hitchcock route was really fun, because it is different from the rest of the characters in “The Addams Family,” but it’s still spooky in the sense that Alfred Hitchcock directed horror films. I also think that she looks very balanced, because Gwendoline Christie has this very strong presence. Most people associate her as Brienne of Tarth from
“Game of Thrones.” But the stereotypical idea of these Hitchcock blondes is that they’re very vulnerable. (sinister music) And I think this aesthetic mirrors Weems’s interior personality really well, because she can be both a very strong, and powerful, and authoritative, as well as very caring and kind, and more vulnerable in how she’s struggling with managing the school. So that’s all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in. Hope you have a lovely rest of your day, and I’ll see you next time. Bye. (kissing sound) (Mina snapping fingers) And don’t forget to click on
my link in the description. Use the code MINALE to get a RHINOSHIELD case today.
