Jenna Ortega who played the role of Wednesday Addams, in the new Netflix series Wednesday, could not blink or smile throughout the filming of scenes. Jenna Ortega said, “The first couple weeks of shooting, I did a take where I didn’t blink at all and Tim said, ‘I don’t want you to blink anymore'”, she revealed in a Netflix interview. “I would reset my face, drop all the muscles in my face and Tim really liked the Kubrick stare.”
Wednesday is the reinvented series of the Addams family, which follows the daughter Wednesday who is now a teen. The movie was filmed and directed by Tim Burton. Wednesday is very witty and has lots of teen angst. Wednesday attends Nevermore academy which is a boarding school for other outcasts like her (think Harry Potter). The story is a horror mystery with a touch of the typical high school tropes (which are similar to the cliques of Mean Girls but think more supernatural). Throughout the series, Wednesday discovers the secrets of the school but also within herself.
Over three weeks after the show’s release it gained billions of hours worth of views surpassed only by squid games and Stranger Things 4. On rotten tomatoes, Wednesday has a rating of 72%. On IMDb, it has a rating of 8.4/10.
Wednesday has influenced the pop culture of Gen Z. Many people have been obsessing over Wednesday’s outfits and our makeup looks. Scenes throughout the series have been spreading over Tik Tok such as the iconic dance Jenna Ortega performs. Jenna Ortega later tells through interviews how she had to choreograph the entire piece herself and took inspiration from past gothic dance moves from the sixties which inspired Ortega’s interpretation of how Wednesday would dance.
Throughout Clayton, most of the students have watched Wednesday and when it first came out it was the topic of discussion. Margaret Thompson, a junior at Clayton High School said, “I love the actress Jenna Ortega and think she did an amazing job representing Wednesday. I also really loved the friendship between Enid and Wednesday”.
Something that seems to be arising throughout the series is the possible love triangle that happens with Tyler, Wednesday, and Xavier. The show should really try to avoid this trope because it could become a show like Twilight which fundamentally would take away from the main themes Wednesday is trying to bring across.
Something unknown to many watching the show is that the Addams family is Latino and the actors who played the Addams family wanted to bring their culture out through it. Most Hollywood films censor non-white perspectives so it’s important that we bring more diverse perspectives out through the media however small it may be it still makes an impact.