Christina Ricci Came Up With The Addams Family's Big Plot Twist At 10 Years Old

In Barry Sonnenfeld's 1991 film adaptation of "The Addams Family," the titular family begins the movie fractured. Gomez (Raul Julia) and Morticia (Anjelica Huston) are present, as are their kids Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman), along with Grandmama (Judith Malina) and their butler Lurch (Carel Struycken). Missing, however, is their kooky Uncle Fester, who mysteriously vanished years before. Fester is Gomez's brother, and Gomez misses him terribly. 

The plot of the movie involves a couple of con artists (Dan Hedaya, Dana Ivey) whose son Gordon (Christopher Lloyd) just happens to look exactly like Fester. They decide to use Gordon to infiltrate the Addams family's mansion to report on their secrets and steal their fortune. The Addams family, however, is a cadre of death-worshiping ghouls who, in the film's opening scene, are seen pouring boiling oil on Christmas carolers. Wednesday seems to regularly murder (the perhaps immortal) Pugsley, and it's implied throughout the film that every single member of the family has committed acts of murder, torture, and cannibalism. Gordon, however, takes to play-acting Fester remarkably well, leading audiences to wonder if Gordon is actually Fester with a case of amnesia. 

Early in the production of "The Addams Family," after the actors had already been cast, Fester's true identity was still a big question mark in the screenplay. Was that actually Fester, or was Gordon simply fond of the creepy, kooky Addamses? According to an "Addams Family Values" retrospective in the Hollywood Reporter, it was the then-10-year-old Christina Ricci who decided that it should be an amnesiac Fester, and not Gordon. It was, after all, the more emotionally satisfying ending. The Addams reunited. 

The original "Addams Family" screenplay is credited to Caroline Thompson and Larry Wilson, but, like most Hollywood features, was re-written extensively by other uncredited screenwriters. For Sonnenfeld's 1991 film, Paul Rudnick re-wrote the entire screenplay to be a little more focused, at least plot-wise. Rudnick is a successful author of novels and screenplays who worked on films like "The First Wives Club" and "Sister Act" (under the nom de plume Joseph Howard). He also took on the persona of Libby Gelman-Waxner for a hilarious regular column in Premiere Magazine. About the 1991 "Addams Family" movie, he recalled re-writing it, and showing the screenplay to Christina Ricci. She, at age 10, was already savvy enough to know what would be the more satisfying ending. Rudnick said: 

"I re-wrote the first 'Addams Family' movie, though its plot was always freewheeling. For example: we were never quite sure if Uncle Fester should be the real thing or an imposter. If I remember correctly, Christina Ricci explained why Fester should be the real deal, and she, as always, made perfect sense and was extremely helpful. I think she pointed out that it was simply more emotionally satisfying and necessary to have the real Fester return to his loving and odd family." 

Ricci was right. It would have felt ... odd, if Fester was merely absent from the Addams Family. Even if the "Gordon" character ended up changing his name to Fester and living with the Addams family, it would have felt off in an indefinable way. It made more emotional sense for him to be reunited with his original brother, happy to be a murderous freak like the rest of them.

In a 2012 interview with Vulture, the very talkative Barry Sonnenfeld backed up Rudnick's story, recalling that Ricci didn't just make the suggestion that Fester join the family, but that she was doing so on behalf of the rest of the cast, who felt the same way she did. Sonnenfeld and producer Scott Rudin were fully prepared to shoot a script wherein Fester was an imposter all the way through the end. But, in his words, "the actor rebelled." He said: 

"[O]n the day we started to rehearse, and I remember this really fondly, the spokesperson that all the other actors — Raúl Juliá, Anjelica Huston — chose to speak on their behalf was a 10-year-old Christina Ricci. And she gave this really impassioned plea that Fester shouldn't be an imposter. Actually, the only actor who didn't care about this was Christopher Lloyd, who played Fester! He didn't care, but all the other actors were rebellious over this, so we ended up totally changing that plot point to make the actors happy. And they were right. It was the better way to go." 

"The Addams Family" was a marvelous horror/comedy that made a wildly impressive $191 million at the box office. The 1993 follow-up, "Addams Family Values" was less successful with a take of only $111 million, but that film seems to be even more widely beloved in retrospect; "Values" ends with Wednesday capturing and murdering all the adults at a condescending summer camp for kids. In recent years, the Addamses have returned to the big screen in animated form, and to the small screen in the form of Tim Burton's spin-off "Wednesday." So their legacy lives on. Fester was always a member of the family.