This Buffy The Vampire Slayer Actress Got Her Start With Two Addams Family Roles

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is a show all about demons in high school, and despite first impressions, Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter) is not one of them. Yes, at first, she's a typical mean popular girl, the kind who drops gems like "What is your childhood trauma?" and "Tact is just not saying true stuff. I'll pass." Yet like Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) herself did previously when destiny called, Cordelia developed beyond that. Joining the "Scooby gang" in season 2, Cordelia slowly grows into a more selfless (but always tactless) person and even learns her way around a vampire-killing stake.

The same can not be said of her sidekick, Harmony Kendall (Mercedes McNab), who stays vapid and airheaded until the end. (We do mean the very end; Harmony joined the spin-off "Angel" in season 5 as the gang's secretary, so she appeared all the way through the "Buffy" pilot and then the capstone "Angel" finale.) Harmony changes in another way, though: She becomes a vampire at the end of season 3.

Though the Scooby gang are vampire slayers, they don't take Harmony too seriously, nor does the show itself. See her slo-mo "fight scene" with fellow "butt monkey" Xander (Nicholas Brendon) in season 4, or Buffy laughing hysterically at the idea that "Harmony has minions" in season 5.

Before her time on "Buffy," McNab appeared in both of the 1990s' "Addams Family" films. Her first ever film role was in "The Addams Family" as a Girl Scout who tries to sell cookies to Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) at their lemonade stand. She presses if the Addams' lemonade is made from real lemons, so Wednesday asks if the cookies are made from real Girl Scouts.

In "Addams Family Values," McNab returned as Wednesday's summer camp nemesis, Amanda Buckman. 

"The Addams Family" has always been a satirical farce of the American nuclear family. (And yes, that Morticia and Gomez remain "couple goals" even after years of marriage is part of the joke of how unusual the Addamses are.) The humor of their stories come from them thinking how the odd and macabre are normal. "Addams Family Values" executes that with a pointed political message.

During the movie, Wednesday and Pugsley go to Camp Chippewa, giving them a taste of normal American childhood that's utterly alien to them. "Addams Family Values" uses that set-up to tell a story about how those who are different become marginalized. Chippewa is run by husband and wife duo Gary Granger (Peter MacNicol) & Becky Martin-Granger (Christine Baranski). Beneath the phony smiles, the Grangers demean everyone who isn't the WASP ideal like the blonde, blue-eyed Amanda. Little Miss Buckman herself relishes being the authority figures' favorite.

The climax of the Camp Chippewa story is the campers putting on a sanitized reenactment of Thanksgiving, where the European Pilgrims and the Native Americans feasted together in supposed harmony. (No "Buffy" pun intended.) Wednesday leads a revolt, essentially acting out how Thanksgiving should have gone with the Natives throwing out the settlers. Amanda, dressed in her Pilgrim costume, is tied up, has an apple stuck in her mouth like a roast pig, and screams in terror as Wednesday lights a match. We see soon, though, that Wednesday held herself back from cooking Amanda. She'd already won, after all, and in the end saw Amanda to be beneath her, like how Buffy saw Harmony.

Wednesday's Camp Chippewa revolt has turned "Addams Family Values" into a Thanksgiving classic, an enduring legacy which can feel like a backhanded compliment for McNab.

Speaking to Buzzfeed in 2013 for the movie's 20th anniversary, McNab bemoaned that she has to relive her "awkward" adolescence every year around November:

"Is there not another movie they can play during this time? That was probably my awkward stage so every year, around Halloween and Thanksgiving, I have to relive my awkward stage ... It's been like 20 years. I was actually dwelling on that. I was thinking, 'Wow, it's been 20 years. Oh my god, that's terrifying. I can't believe I'm that old.'"

Still, getting an expanded role in the sequel off your first-ever acting job is no small feat. "At that time, I'd probably gone on 100 auditions and had never gotten a job yet," McNab recounted to Buzzfeed. She made the casting team for "The Addams Family" laugh (having borrowed her friend's Girl Scout uniform for the audition) and booked the gig.

"My parents kept warning me, 'You know, it's such a small scene. Don't even be surprised if it's not in the movie. It could easily be cut out.' And then, we found out later that when they were doing screenings with test audiences, it was voted everyone's favorite scene."

Since the scene was so popular, it made sense to bring McNab back for the sequel, even as a different character ... or is she? If you're so inclined, there's nothing that says the Girl Scout and Amanda aren't the same character. Since they have the same personality, same actress, and same dynamic with Wednesday, that'd be almost too perfect a connection for it not to be true. Similarly, if you want to know what Harmony Kendall was probably like as a little girl, see Amanda Buckman.