Wednesday Addams

"Child of woe is wan and delicate...sensitive and on the quiet side, she loves the picnics and outings to the underground caverns...loves the color black...a solemn child, prim in dress and, on the whole, pretty lost...secretive and imaginative, poetic, seems underprivileged and given to occasional tantrums...has six toes on one foot..." -Charles Addams

Template:Gallery Template Wednesday Friday Addams is a fictional character created by American cartoonist Charles Addams in his comic strip The Addams Family. The character has also appeared in television and film, in both the live action and animated formats.

Wednesday

In Addams' cartoons, which first appeared in The New Yorker, Wednesday and other members of the family had no names. When the characters were adapted to the 1964 television series, Charles Addams gave her the name "Wednesday", based on the well-known nursery rhyme line, "Wednesday's child is full of woe." She is the sister of Pugsley, Pugsley Jr., Wednesday Jr., and Pubert, and is the oldest daughter of Gomez and Morticia Addams.

Appearance and personality

In Addams' cartoons, Wednesday is originally a pale, dark-haired, grim-looking little girl who is fascinated with death and the macabre. She seldom smiles.

In the 1960s series, she is significantly more sweet-natured, although her favorite hobby is raising spiders; she is also a ballerina. Wednesday's favorite toy is her Marie Antoinette doll, which her brother guillotines (at her request). She is stated to be six years old in the television series' pilot episode. In one episode, she is shown to have several other headless dolls as well. She also paints pictures (including a picture of trees with human heads) and writes a poem dedicated to her favorite pet spider, Homer. Wednesday is deceptively strong; she is able to bring her father down with a judo hold.

In the 1991 film, she is depicted closer to the original cartoons. She shows sadistic tendencies and a dark personality, and is revealed to have a deep interest in the Bermuda Triangle and an admiration for an ancestor (Great Aunt Calpurnia Addams) who was burned as a witch in 1706. In the 1993 sequel she was even darker: buried alive a cat, tried to kill her brother Pubert, destroyed Camp Chipewa and (presumably) scared her boyfriend Joel to death .

Wednesday has a close kinship with the family's giant butler Lurch. In the TV series, her middle name is "Friday". In the Spanish-language version, her name is Miércoles Addams (Spain [Wednesday in Spanish]) or Merlina Addams (Latin America). In the Brazilian version her name is Wandinha (Little Wanda in Portuguese) and in Italy her name is Mercoledì (Wednesday in Italian).

In the animated series and Canadian TV series The New Addams Family from the 1990s, Wednesday retains her appearance and her taste for darkness and torture.

In the Broadway musical The Addams Family: A New Musical, she is 18 years old and has short hair rather than the long braids in her other appearances. Her darkness and sociopathic traits have been toned down, and she is in love with (and revealed to be engaged to) Lucas Beineke.

Appearances

The Addams Family (1964-1966)

In the original sitcom, Wednesday tends to be a lot happier than in the New Yorker Cartoons; she likes ballet and poems and is generally very polite and sweet. She breeds spiders and knows Judo.

She dislikes school, especially the stories they read to them where they slay Dragons.

The New Scooby-Doo Movies

Wednesday appears in the crossover with Scooby-Doo, an episode titled "Wednesday Is Missing". Wednesday first appears playing with a voodoo doll, and is upset when the pins prick her. She is very polite to the new housekeepers, Mystery Inc., and gets the table to settle down after it rises. She later goes missing, and Mystery Inc. spends most of the episode trying to locate her.

She was unaware that she was being searched for, as she simply stayed in the tower where she was placed and played with her spider, Homer, who "makes a groovy yoyo".

The Addams Family (1991)

Wednesday's first appearance in the film is her playing with her brother Pugsley by shooting an apple in his mouth, before the two of them head off to school. The two of them also play in outside with an antenna during a thunderstorm before they're called inside for the seance.

Wednesday greets Tully and Margaret Alford at the door as they arrive for the seance, helping Margaret get the fingertrap off. She speaks during the seance, calling for the ancestors to help them find Fester, who soon appears.

Wednesday is suspicious of Fester and Dr. Pinder-Schloss, as they claim Fester was in the Bermuda Triangle, and, according to Wednesday, "Nobody gets out of the Bermuda Triangle." She keeps an eye on Fester when he tries to escape his room later that night.

She maintains her suspicions, talking about it with Pugsley as she attempts to electrocute him during their game "Is There a God?" However, she becomes more trusting of him when he helps them with their Shakespeare Performance at school, helping Pugsley choreograph his stabs and giving them bloody fake limbs to wear.

When Fester says he has to leave, the Addamses throw him a party with all their relatives. Morticia sends Wednesday upstairs to fetch Fester, but she overhears him talking with Pinder-Schloss- who is really Abigail Craven- and finds out that Fester is an imposter trying to steal their money. She flees from them and hides in the Mausoleum, where she falls asleep until Gomez finds her. She tells them that Fester is a fake, but they're too late, as Fester has locked them out of the house.

The family has to live in a motel, where Wednesday and Pugsley try to raise money by selling Lemonade, but Wednesday scares away a Girl Scout customer.

Later, when Craven and Tully are thrown from the house, they land in graves dug by the Addams Children, who bury them.

The next Halloween, Wednesday comes downstairs to greet Cousin Itt and Margaret, who asks her what her costume is, as she appears not to have one. She responds, "This is my costume. I'm a homicidal maniac. They look just like everyone else." She later wants Fester to be on her team for "Wake the Dead."

Addams Family Values (1993)

The film opens with Wednesday, Pugsley and Grandmama burying a live cat outside. They later go to the hospital when Morticia goes into labor, where Wednesday tells a little girl that her parents had sex and argues with Pugsley over the baby's gender.

However, after the baby's birth, Wednesday informs Pugsley that once a new baby is born, one of the other children has to die, and she and Pugsley try to drop their new brother Pubert off the roof. Their parents assure them that they won't be killed, but the two siblings continue to try and kill Pubert in several different ways.

Since this is starting to stress Morticia, their parents try to hire a Nanny, but Wednesday continues to scare them off. Finally, Debbie Jellinsky is hired, since she seems to get along well with the Family. However, Wednesday grows suspicious that Debbie may not be what she seems, so Debbie convinces Gomez and Morticia to send the two children to Camp Chippewa. Once there, Wednesday makes quick enemies with the popular girl, Amanda Buckman, but also becomes allies with a boy named Joel Glicker. The Camp Counselors, Becky and Gary, favor the popular campers and are very unfair to the outcast campers, of which Wednesday becomes the ringleader.

While at camp, Wednesday finds out that Fester and Debbie are getting married, and her refusal to hug the other campers gets her and Pugsley sent to the Harmony Hut, after which she and Pugsley try to escape, aided by Joel, but are caught and subjected to the campers singing Kumbaya. Wednesday and Joel become closer and she invites him to the Wedding, since she has a free pass to go. After she returns to camp, she receives a letter from Fester that says he never wants to see them again, to which she concludes that "he's a dead man."

She, Joel and Pugsley hide under the bleachers during a Camp Announcement to look at Joel's Serial Killer Trading Cards, where he finds the Black Widow, which they suspect is Debbie. Wednesday then discovers that she's been selected to play Pocahontas in the Camp Pageant, "A Turkey Named Brotherhood," to her horror.

She, Joel and Pugsley sneak away to try and call the FBI, only to be caught and dragged back, since they missed their costume fitting. Wednesday states that she doesn't want to be in the Pageant, as she thinks it's "puerile and under-dramatized." Becky and Gary then decide to brainwash the three by showing them happy movies, like "The Little Mermaid" and "The Brady Bunch". It appears to have worked, as Wednesday says she wants to be perky and even smiles.

During the play, Wednesday arrives as Pocahontas and tells Sara Miller (who is played by Amanda) that they brought a gift- a turkey- and compliments her beauty. However, she then stops the play, describing to the Pilgrims all the horrors that will be inflicted on the Natives, before announcing that she will scalp the pilgrims "and burn [their] village to the ground". The Misfit Campers (who are all playing Indians) then revolt, burning down the camp, putting Becky and Gary on a spit, and tying Amanda to a stake, before Wednesday approaches and lights a match, intent on burning her alive.

Later, she escapes over the camp fence, sharing a kiss with Joel before driving away with Pugsley. They arrive at the house, reunited with their family, before Debbie arrives and ties the Family to electric chairs, monologing her backstory to them before trying to kill them. However, they are saved by Pubert.

Some Time Later, at Pubert's birthday party, Joel and Wednesday walk outside in the garden. Joel asks her if she would ever want to get married or have kids, to which she replies that she doesn't, and she would pity any man who would want to "be [her] devoted slave." Joel says Debbie was sad, to which she replies, "She was sloppy. If I wanted to kill my husband, I'd do it. And I wouldn't get caught [...] I'd scare him to death." A hand then shoots out of Debbie's grave and grabs Joel, as Wednesday smiles.

Portrayals

Over the years, Wednesday has been portrayed by a variety of actresses, on television, the movies, and stage:

• Lisa Loring (Live-action TV 1964–1966, 1977)
• Cindy Henderson (Animated TV 1972–1974)
• Christina Ricci (Live-action movies 1991, 1993)
• Debi Derryberry (Animated TV 1992–1994)
• Nicole Fugere (Live-action movie 1998, Live-action TV 1998–1999)
• Krysta Rodriguez (Broadway musical 2010)
• Rachel Potter (Broadway musical 2011)
• Cortney Wolfson (2011 First National Broadway Tour)
• Laura Lobo (2012 First Brazilian Cast)
• Frankie Lowe (2012 UK National Tour)
• Jennifer Fogarty (2013 Asian Tour)
• Gloria Aura (2014 Mexican Tour)
• Carrie Hope Fletcher (2017 UK Tour)

Wednesday is played by Lisa Loring in the original TV series. In the first animated series from Hanna-Barbera, her voice was done by Cindy Henderson. Henderson voiced that same character in an episode of The New Scooby-Doo Movies. In the second animated series from Hanna-Barbera, she is voiced by Debi Derryberry.

• The Addams Family (1991) and its sequel Addams Family Values (1993), portray Wednesday more malevolent than her television self. Wednesday's personality is severe, with a deadpan wit and a morbid interest in trying to inflict harm upon her brothers, first Pugsley and later Pubert. In both films, she is played by Christina Ricci. In the movie Addams Family Values (1993), Wednesday is sent to a summer camp for "privileged young adults" called Camp Chippewa, where Joel Glicker (played by David Krumholtz), takes a liking to Wednesday. She refuses to participate in Gary Granger's play, a musical production of the first Thanksgiving. She, Pugsley, and Joel are locked in the "Harmony Hut" and forced to watch upbeat family films to curb their antisocial behavior. On emerging from the hut, Wednesday feigns perkiness and agrees to play the role of Pocahontas. However, during the play, she leads the other social outcasts—who have all been cast as Native Americans—in a revolt, capturing Gary, Becky, and Amanda and leaving the camp in chaos. Before she leaves, Wednesday and Joel kiss. Joel is a neurotic, allergy-ridden boy with an overbearing mother. In one scene in the film, she smiles, which ends up scaring the campers, as well as her blonde nemesis. At the end of the film, it is suggested that Wednesday, though she obviously likes Joel, purposely tries to scare him to death after he brings up the subject of marriages.

• In the 1977 television holiday-themed special, Halloween with the New Addams Family, Lisa Loring plays a grown-up Wednesday, who mostly entertains their party guests with her flute, and can hear and understand coded help messages by bound-up members of the family, and dispatch help to free them. In the time interval between the original TV series and this television movie, her parents had two more children who look just like the original Pugsley and Wednesday.

• Wednesday is portrayed by Nicole Fugere in the straight-to-video movie Addams Family Reunion and Fox Family Channel's television series The New Addams Family, which were both produced in 1998.

• In April 2010, The Addams Family: A New Musical, debuted on Broadway. Krysta Rodriguez played Wednesday. The character is now 18 years old, has "become a woman", and to that effect no longer sports her signature pigtails. The musical is based on the characters as created by Charles Addams. In March 2011, Krysta Rodriguez was replaced with Rachel Potter as Wednesday in the Broadway cast. Starting in September 2011, the production begins its First National Tour. Cortney Wolfson has been cast in the Wednesday Addams role. In the Broadway production, she was the understudy for Wednesday and performed as the Dead Bride/Ancestor.

Gallery

Christina Ricci

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Lisa Loring

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Melissa Hunter as the adult version of Wednesday in her webserie

Legacy

• Bridget Marquardt, from The Girls Next Door, has named her dog Wednesday after the character.
• Musician Wednesday 13 derived his moniker from the character.
• Comedian Melissa Hunter portrayed the character in her web series Adult Wednesday Addams. It gained media attention with the third episode of Season 2 in which she punished a pair of catcallers. As of June, 2015, all episodes of this series have been removed from YouTube, Melissa Hunter stating that the videos were flagged, hinting that it was due to unlicensed use of the character.
• In the parody web series Adult Wednesday Addams, Wednesday, as played by Melissa Hunter, recovers her dark, sociopathic and sadistic nature and her long braids, connecting with the events and the depiction of the movies and the original comic-book. This Wednesday deals with being an adult after moving out of her family home.