Actress Thora Birch left the Tim Burton live-action Addams Family spinoff show Wednesday.
Deadline is reporting that Birch, who rose to prominence with a role in the 1999 movie American Beauty, is dealing with an unspecified personal issue.
“Thora has returned to the States to attend to a personal matter and will not be returning to the production,” a source said.
The issue reportedly involves an illness in the family.
Birch played Wednesday Addams’ dorm mother Tamara Novak on the show, following the young Addams’ exploits during her stay at Nevermore Academy. You star Jenna Ortega plays the role of Wednesday.
Producers will not be recasting the role but instead adding a new character. How that will work out and whether the character will take over for Novak or replace her remains to be seen.
The show’s described as a “sleuthing, supernaturally infused mystery.”
“(Wednesday) attempts to master her emerging psychic ability, thwart a monstrous killing spree that has terrorized the local town, and solve the supernatural mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago – all while navigating her new and very tangled relationships at Nevermore,” the show’s synopsis said.
Wednesday also stars Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Addams, Luis Guzmán as Gomez Addams, and Emma Myers as Enid Sinclair.
Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, from Smallville, are the show’s head writers and executive producers alongside Burton. MGM TV financed the show, which caused a bidding war upon its announcement, with Netflix coming out victorious.
Cartoonist Charles Addams created The Addams Family in the 1930s, and it’s appeared in various forms over the decades, including a TV show in the ’60s and a string of movies in the ’90s. An animated movie came out in 2019.
Wednesday will premiere sometime in 2022.
