Wednesday Addams has been a staple of pop culture since cartoonist Charles Addams created her in the 1930s. But she's always been a part of her larger clan, which makes Christina Ricci's breakout performance in the two Addams Family movies in the 1990s so impressive. Amid stellar performances from the likes of Anjelica Huston, Raul Julia and Christopher Lloyd, she sneaks in and steals the show from under everyone's noses. Her performance has become a classic, leading to a long and successful career for the veteran actor.
That's part of what makes Jenna Ortega's turn in the Wednesday Netflix series such a triumph. Ricci walked so that she could run, and with a second season on the way, she's already staked her claim as a Wednesday of note. The two performances are far more complimentary than competitive, and each actor brings something unique to their version of the character. Here's a breakdown of the ways Ricci and Ortega play Wednesday the way no one else ever could.
10 Ortega's Wednesday Walks Alone
Wednesday makes a smart move by putting its heroine in high school rather than depicting her at age 10 or 11. Not only does it give Ortega some space between her and her imposing predecessor, but it makes far more her own character than Ricci's version: isolated from her family (save for Thing, who serves as her stalwart sidekick) and dealing with the world on her own terms.
That provides a better firmament for her identity, and well as letting her make her own mistakes and learn from them. Ortega reveals her perceptiveness, intelligence, and pluck in finding her way forward, rather than long-term interactions with other members of her family. It's a fitting arc for a 16-year-old, even one as precocious and world-wise as she.
9 Ricci's Wednesday Is a Family Girl
Ricci's Wednesday comes as a pleasant surprise in the first Addams Family movie because she's strictly a supporting character. The story centers around Uncle Fester's return after an extended absence, and its impact on Gomez. She and Pugsley essentially act as joke machines -- riffing on classic Charles Addams cartoons -- and the actor wins the day on exquisite timing and a suitably dark demeanor.
It also helps her play off of the rest of the cast, integrating her into the Addamses more organically and letting fans enjoy the interaction. This continues even when she's "on her own" at camp in the sequel Addams Family Values. With Pugsley and first-kiss boyfriend Joel Glicker behind her, she's always part of a team -- something Ortega's version struggles with by design until the late episodes of the first season.
8 Ortega's Wednesday Is a Superior Sleuth
The Wednesday from the movies is rarely baffled or at a loss. Indeed, Ricci's deadpan certainty is a key part of the character's appeal. She's suspicious of Uncle Fester's return in the first Addams Family movie, but he soon wins her over.
Ortega's version, on the other hand, must deduce the identity of an inhuman serial killer with little more than her wits and a few reluctant accomplices. That lets her play detective and unravel the Byzantine mystery surrounding her, finding the answers to all manner of questions. It puts her intelligence on display, as when she solves the secret of the Poe statue in Season 1, Episode 2, "Woe Is the Loneliest Number."
7 Ricci's Wednesday Has a Social Conscience
For all her ghoulish proclivities, Christina Ricci's version of Wednesday reveals a surprisingly strong sense of social justice. It comes out most prominently during the infamous Thanksgiving pageant at camp, where she is made to play Pocahontas. Before she and her friends burn the place to the ground, she rattles off a litany of horrors inflicted on First Nations people in the last 400 years, and calls out the camp counselors for their whitewashing play.
She's joined in her destruction by a bevvy of camp cast-offs, consisting of racial minorities, the disabled, and basically anyone not white and blonde. The Addamses have always been outsiders, but Wednesday's revolt codifies that in clear terms. Ortega's version is similar, with her pilgrim's speech being one of the highlights of the first season. However, she's misanthropic enough to leave larger social issues unspoken. For Ricci, even burning people alive can serve an important social purpose.
6 Ortega's Wednesday Has a Compassionate Side
Wednesday begins with its title character alienated, loathing Nevermore, and with no interest in connecting to her fellow students. That gradually changes over time, allowing her to let her guard down and allow genuine friends into her circle. Her roommate Enid Sinclair deserves credit for the win on that front, but the trend ultimately extends to Wednesday's best frenemy Bianca.
Her compassion pays off in the Season 1 finale, as the resurrected Joseph Crackstone threatens to destroy Nevermore. By developing a coterie of her own -- separate from her family -- she better establishes her own identity. It also gives her a stronger moral compass than Ricci's Wednesday, allowing her to develop something resembling ethical principles.
5 Ricci's Wednesday Is Delightfully Homicidal
As ghoulish as she can be, Ortegas' Wednesday is still essentially a good kid at heart. Her darker proclivities are right at home in Nevermore, and when murders strike, she's as keen as anyone to find the killer. Her indifference is more affectation than sociopathy, despite her perennial status as the most Gothic of Goths.
Ricci's Wednesday, on the other hand, is likely a serial killer in the making. The two movies show her routinely attempting murder, whether subjecting her baby brother Pubert to the guillotine or burning Amanda Buckman at the stake. The film always cuts away or delivers some eleventh-hour rescue. Such moments always make for brilliantly dark comedy, but there's no question as to the character's mindset: she'll kill a human being like she's swatting a fly.
4 Ortega's Wednesday Faces Real Danger
The Addams Family movies are ultimately comedies, and while the plots demand a certain amount of conflict, there's little overt threat to the family members. Even Debbie's attempted mass electrocution at the end of Addams Family Values is played entirely for laughs. Death becomes another source of humor.
Things are much different in Wednesday, with killers on the loose and the Addams daughter right in their crossfire. It lends Ortega's Wednesday a sense of vulnerability that her predecessors lacked, as well as a more genuine challenge to overcome. It also allows her to conquer a more formidable challenge, earning more audience sympathy in the process.
3 Ricci's Wednesday is Utterly Unflappable
There's something enviable about the way Ricci's Wednesday is never shocked or surprised by anything. She rolls with life's punches without skipping a beat, and even her few moments of defeat -- such as her seeming conversion to sunny optimism at summer camp -- are only a ruse in more elaborate plans. It grants her a serenity beyond her years.
It's also one of the big reasons Ricci's Wednesday made such a big impression. Before the movies, the character was a sweet, odd little girl -- "pretty lost" as Charles Addams describes her -- but most definitely a child. Ricci's performance allows adults to identify with her, and even emulate her fearless stoicism.
2 Ortega's Wednesday Is Queen of the Dance Floor
Wednesday is theoretically quite a dancer, and the late Lisa Loring cut quite the rug on a couple of occasions during the live-action Addams Family series from the 1960s. Ricci's Wednesday isn't much of a dancer -- she prefers Shakespearean murder scenes -- and leaves the rug-cutting to her parents. It's simply not a factor for her in the movies.
Ortega, on the other hand, finds her moment of transcendence during Nevermore Academy's Rave'N dance in Season 1, Episode 4, "Woe What a Night." Dressed in black against the formal white of the other patrons, she dominates the floor with fantastically funky moves to the sound of The Cramps. The actor choreographed the scene herself, and make Wednesday irrefutably her own in the bargain.
1 Ricci's Wednesday Is Queen of Revenge
Ortega has ample opportunities to avenge herself upon her enemies, most notably with the school of piranhas she sets loose on the water polo team for tormenting her brother. But none of them can hold a candle to Ricci's destruction of her vile summer camp during Addams Family Values. Her ordeal sets her against the relentlessly chipper head counselors hellbent on cramming sunshine down everyone's throat.
Wednesday's vengeance is the stuff of legend: gathering the camp's neglected outsiders and turning the Thanksgiving pageant they're forced to participate in into an open revolt. The icing on the cake comes with her rival Amanda tied to a stake and doused with gasoline. Her grin as she lights the match would make Edgar Allan Poe proud.