Netflix is quickly putting together the altogether spooky cast for Tim Burton‘s upcoming live-action series Wednesday, based on The Addams Family. Ten new cast members will join the previously announced Jenna Ortega, Luis Guzmán, and Catherine Zeta-Jones in the eight-part series.
The series follows Wednesday Addams (Ortega) as she enrolls at Nevermore Academy, a prestigious boarding school for the supernaturally-inclined. The newly announced cast fills out Nevermore and its nearby town of Jericho, populating Wednesday’s world with friends and enemies alike. They include Thora Birch, Riki Lindhome, Jamie McShane, Hunter Doohan, Georgie Farmer, Moosa Mostafa, Emma Myers, Naomi J. Ogawa, Joy Sunday, and Percy Hynes White.
Birch, hot off of a recent guest-starring role on The Walking Dead, will play Tamara Novak, Wednesday’s dorm mother and Nevermore’s only “normie” on staff. Garfunkel and Oates creator Lindhome will play Dr. Valerie Kinbott, a therapist in Jericho who takes a special interest in Wednesday after she becomes a patient. Best known for his work on Bloodline, McShane will portray Sheriff Donovan Galpin, Jericho’s lawman with a vendetta against Nevermore alum Gomez Addams (Guzmán). Your Honor‘s Doohan will play his son, Tyler Galpin, who becomes Wednesday’s unlikely friend. As for Wednesday’s unusual classmates: Farmer will play Ajax Petropolus, a gorgon nervous about making eye contact; Mostafa will play Eugene Otinger, the quirky president of Nevermore’s bee-keeping club; Myers will play Enid Sinclair, Wednesday’s werewolf roommate; Ogawa will play Yoko Tanaka, a goth-y vampire; Sunday will play Bianca Barclay, a siren with the alluring power of persuasion; and White will play Xavier Thorpe, a gifted artist with a celebrity psychic father.
The series was created by Smallville duo Al Gough and Miles Millar, who also serve as showrunners, lending it a rarified pedigree of teen dramas with a supernatural twist. The series will mark Burton‘s television directing debut, but between his signature aesthetic and shared ground with his Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, it’s hard to imagine a better fit. Gough, Millar, and Burton will also executive produce, alongside Steve Stark, Andrew Mittman, Kevin Miserocchi, Kayla Alpert, Jonathan Glickman, and Gail Berman. Mittman, Miserocchi, Glickman, and Berman are also producers on the upcoming animated sequel, The Addams Family 2.
Here’s the official synopsis for Wednesday:
Based on the character originally created by Charles Addams, “Wednesday” is a young adult TV series described as a a sleuthing, supernaturally infused mystery charting Wednesday Addams’ years as a student at Nevermore Academy. She attempts 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.
via Collider