Jenna Ortega is going to have to tap into her creepy and kooky side soon. The 18-year-old actress has been cast as Wednesday Addams in the upcoming, live-action Netflix series Wednesday from two-time Oscar-nominated director Tim Burton (Frankenweenie).
“New chapter. Hope I can do Wednesday Addams justice. *snaps twice*,” Ortega wrote on social media on, fittingly, Wednesday (May 19) and included a photo holding up a script from the series.
Wednesday is an eight-episode series that follows the eldest child of the Addams Family while she’s a student at Nevermore Academy. The synopsis from Netflix reads that Wednesday’s new adventures include trying “to master her emerging psychic ability, thwart a monstrous killing spree that has terrorized the local town and solve the supernatural mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago–all while navigating her new and very tangled relationships at Nevermore.”
Ortega’s no stranger to Netflix projects. She’s starred in the crime-drama You, the horror-comedy sequel The Babysitter: Killer Queen, the animated series Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous and the family comedy Yes Day alongside Edgar Ramírez and Jennifer Garner. Ortega is also part of the Cinematic Universe. In her tween years, she played the unnamed Vice President’s daughter in Iron Man 3. Next year, Ortega will be seen in the fifth installment of the Scream franchise, confusingly called Scream.
Before it was revealed that Burton was making a series focused on Wednesday’s character, we argued that he should cast a Latino to star in the Gomez Addams role since the late Raul Julia portrayed him so well in the movies from the 1990s. Now, with Ortega’s casting, we want the whole familia. *Snap snap*