Wednesday Addams has never been made of sugar or spice. Canonically surrounding herself with decapitated dolls, pet scorpions, and working guillotines, she’s pretty unlikely to be joining the Optimists Club at Nevermore Academy in any future season of her self-titled solo series Wednesday. But apparently, some of the higher-ups at Netflix didn’t read the character description.
Despite an overall supportive atmosphere during the production, co-creator Alfred Gough reveals that “we still did have executives wanting to cut some lines.” During his recent discussion, along with his writing partner and fellow Wednesday creator Miles Millar with Indiewire, Gough said the networks execs weren’t exactly as crazy as Wednesday would be about one particular line.
In the show’s second episode, Wednesday is approached by her new roomie, Enid, and asked if she’d like to “take a stab at being social” to which she replies that she is fond of stabbing. That sentiment proved nearly over the line for the executive brass, but Gough and Millar fought to keep the line — which they deemed true to the character — in the script. “That’s the whole point of the character,” Millar said. “To lose that or dilute that is a betrayal of the character.”
It may be that the censorious execs in question were paying more attention to Jenna Ortega, who plays Wednesday, and her character than the rest of the series scripts. After all, the story is liberally laden with discussions of murder and the macabre, and Wednesday’s Uncle Fester, played by Fred Armisen, even manages to far outdo any mention of stabbing when discussing a former acquaintance. “She had it all,” says Fester. “Beauty, brains, and a penchant for necrophilia.”
Wednesday is currently streaming on Netflix.
