Today’s entertainment zeitgeist continues to drool over established IPs, much to the delight of at least half of the world’s moviegoers, and to the dismay of the other half. With respect to this state of affairs, established IPs aren’t as safe as the suits seems to think they are; if a reboot butchers the image of the original too egregiously, you can bet that the world will get markedly loud about it. Charlie Grandy and Mindy Kaling found this out the hard way after nearly destroying television as a medium with Velma.
But one Jenna Ortega found herself on the other side of the spectrum with her starring role in Wednesday, which saw the actress take up the mantle of Wednesday Addams of the Addams Family in one of the freshest takes on the macabre ménage yet.
But it takes plenty of work to reignite such a storied and beloved IP in a way that will win over audiences like Wednesday did, and on her recent guest appearance on hot sauce-centric interview webseries Hot Ones, Ortega divulged the process of approaching Wednesday with respect to both the character’s previous iterations and the new direction that the show was taking.
“I think that fighting the nostalgia that everyone feels for the ‘60s Wednesday and the ‘90s Wednesday while feeding into that, but also giving a new take and making it your own to a new generations so that they’re introduced to the character, was a real balancing act. So I found that as long as I studied the old material and took traits and aspects that I knew I could easily weave into my own iteration, it felt like a good, happy medium.”
And Ortega won that particular fight with nostalgia by several orders of magnitude, helping to launch Wednesday to some of the most lucrative highs ever seen by Netflix whilst getting the show renewed for a second season. Someday, Ortega may just be remembered as the quintessential Wednesday Addams for all we know.
Wednesday is available to stream on Netflix.
Published: Mar 2, 2023 01:13 pm