Summary
- Christina Ricci’s iconic role as Wednesday Addams is widely celebrated as one of the greatest characters in Tim Burton’s films.
- Ricci might not have taken on the role of Morticia in the Netflix series to possibly avoid playing a mother on camera.
- Hollywood legend Kathy Bates provided Ricci with valuable advice on acting, helping her navigate her emotional approach to characters.
For those who remember the 1991 The Addams Family, Christina Ricci’s role as Wednesday Addams is widely considered her most iconic role to date. Stepping into the shoes of the dark, quirky, and sardonic-humored character, Ricci enhanced the goth-teen’s macabre elements to perfection and is fondly remembered as one of the greatest characters in Tim Burton’s long line of films. However, growing up under the harsh Hollywood lights wasn’t always an easy experience for the Yellowjackets star.
Although some Wednesday fans were disappointed to see Ricci not take on the role of Morticia in the Netflix series, Ricci recently gave an insight into why she might not have taken the role. The 45-year-old star revealed that she didn’t want to play a mother on camera because the experience would be “too raw” for her as she sees being a mother herself as a precious thing that she doesn’t want to exploit. However, Wednesday fans did get to see her in another role on the series as Ricci took on the part of Mrs. Marilyn Thornhill and was happy to hand the baton over to Jenna Ortega. As Ricci currently stars as the adult Missy in the thriller TV series about a team of soccer-playing girls who travel to Seattle and face a tragedy when their plane crashes in the Ontario wilderness, the actor recalls advice she received when she was just a teenager auditioning for a Stephen King movie.
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Wednesday’s Christina Ricci Recalls Advice Hollywood Legend Kathy Bates Gave Her
35 years after she debuted alongside Cher and Winona Ryder in the comedy-drama Mermaids, Ricci is now being celebrated with her very own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The 45-year-old actor talked to Variety about her long-running career in the movie industry and her time as a child actor, recalling that she got some very good advice from Hollywood legend Kathy Bates while auditioning for a role in Stephen King’s Dolores Claiborne when she was 13. Ricci states that she always tried to be less emotional and more robotic in her approach to the characters she played, as “No one ever talks to child actors about emotion or using emotion.”
“I remember the first time I realized what acting really was, besides all these sorts of instinctive things I understood about being on camera and delivering lines and consistency of takes and eyelines, hitting marks. All that stuff, I’ve always had down… No one ever talks to child actors about emotion or using emotion.”
However, that all changed when she went to read for a part in King’s classic adaptation directed by Taylor Hackford and was saying her lines in front of Kathy Bates, who has starred in quite a few King movies. “This scene was when she’s on the boat telling her mother what her father’s been doing to her. In the middle of the scene, I was completely overtaken by my emotions. Like I felt the writing trigger all of the feelings inside of me. And I just lost complete control,” expressed Ricci. The star goes on to say that she connected with the words on such a deep level that she started crying, but Bates was there to comfort her with not only a hug but some words of wisdom, too. “Kathy Bates held me and said, ‘Yeah, baby. That’s acting.’ It changed everything for me about how I viewed what I could do and this thing that could happen to me in a moment. And just that I would then be able to genuinely give voice to the writing because you feel it in such an uncontrollable way. And that’s how it feels for me.”
Now, with a slew of films and TV shows under her belt, Ricci is well equipped to give other actors some words of wisdom on how Hollywood works, all thanks to Bates’ kind and understanding guidance. The Wednesday star also said that the film industry threw her a lifeline when she needed it most, stating that her childhood was not very nice and she had a family that was not very safe. “To be able to escape and do this thing where I was totally safe when I was getting validation from adults, and it was based on a skill that I had that was special, I think really, really saved me.”
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Wednesday
6/10
- Release Date
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November 16, 2022
- Showrunner
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Miles Millar, Alfred Gough
- Directors
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Tim Burton, James Marshall, Gandja Monteiro
Source: Variety