Wednesday star Jenna Ortega recently revealed she was terrified of Christina Ricci during their first day of filming together on the upcoming Netflix comedy-horror series.

Ortega, who steps into the Wednesday Addams role previously played by Ricci in The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, talked about working with her co-star in an interview with Empire. "I felt like I was genuinely having a panic attack when I was told [Ricci was joining the Wednesday cast]," she said. "I was terrified. She's a really cool lady. I was fine meeting her, but the first time we did a scene together and she had to see me done up [as Wednesday Addams] the way she was done up 30 years ago, it was nerve-racking."

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Ortega's concerns were ultimately unfounded, as Ricci has since praised the actor's portrayal of Wednesday Addams, calling it "incredible." Ricci added that Ortega captures the essence of who Wednesday is as a character, while also feeling very modern. The Hollywood veteran was also positive about Ortega's makeup and wardrobe in the Netflix series, saying that she knew Ortega would look the part once she was shown photos of her young co-star in costume. Ricci's role in Wednesday is yet to be disclosed, nor is it clear how much screentime she and Ortega share across the first eight-episode season.

Wednesday Offers a New Take on The Addams Family

Despite Ricci's involvement, Wednesday co-creator Miles Millar recently stressed that the show is a fresh take on Charles Addams' original single-panel Addams Family cartoons and not the adaptations it later inspired. "It's not trying to be the movies or the '60s TV show. That was very important to us and very important to [director] Tim [Burton]," he said. Photos of Ortega and Wednesday's other core cast members Catherine Zeta-Jones, Luis Guzmán and Isaac Ordonez surfaced online at the same time as Millar's comments, and clearly showed the influence of Addams' character designs on the production.

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Fans' reactions to the cast photos were broadly positive, however, Guzmán's portrayal of Gomez Addams sparked a heated debate on Twitter. Detractors of this interpretation took issue with everything from Guzmán's stature to his ethnicity, citing either John Astin or Raul Julia as their preferred screen version of Gomez. Guzmán's supporters were quick to respond, insisting that the actor's appearance in the series more closely resembles Gomez as originally envisioned by his creator, and noting that the character's name implies he has non-white ancestry.

Wednesday arrives on Netflix on Nov. 23, 2022.

Source: Empire