If you hear the phrase, ‘Tim Burton movie’, what do you think of? Dark, dramatic costume design? Clashes of black against bold, bright colours? A wry sense of humour, layered on top of a certain kind of macabre spookiness? All things that could also be applied to the Addams Family – the iconic clan first created by Charles Addams in his cartoon back in the 1930s. So, it seems strange that the director has never been involved in a project featuring the finger-clicking family, given their sensibilities are so well matched – until now, that is, with upcoming Netflix series Wednesday.
While Burton was in talks to make a stop-motion Addams Family film back in 2010 for Universal (“That never really went anywhere. I was intrigued by it… but I think they wanted to go a more computer-generated way”), it was Wednesday's take on the famously inexpressive, pigtail-wearing teen – from creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar – that hooked him in. “When I read this [script],” he says, “it just spoke to me about how I felt in school and how you feel about your parents, how you feel as a person. It gave the Addams Family a different kind of reality. It was an interesting combination.”
The show follows the Addams daughter this time as a teenager (played here by Jenna Ortega) as she attends boarding school – and, as it turns out, looking back at his own school days is part of what encouraged Burton to come aboard as director. “In 1976, I went to a high-school prom,” he recalls. “It was the year Carrie came out. I felt like a male Carrie at that prom. I felt that feeling of having to be there but not be part of it. They don’t leave you, those feelings, as much as you want them to go.” It meant that even the adult Burton could still connect to the quandaries faced by his teenage title character. “You know, Wednesday and I have the same worldview,” he says. If she’d been at that prom back in 1976, maybe the director wouldn’t have felt quite so lonely.
Read Empire’s full Wednesday feature in the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever issue – on sale Thursday 29 September, and available to order online here. Wednesday hits Netflix on 23 November.