Fester is never more delighted than when he is channeling electric voltage through his body, and with his signature dark cloak, round collar, and bald dome, Armisen compared him to a common household object. “In the TV show, he had that lightbulb in his mouth, and there’s something sort of lightbulb-ish about him,” the actor says.
The offbeat uncle first appeared in cartoonist Charles Addams gothic comics in the 1940s and ‘50s, then was played by Jackie Coogan in the 1960s TV sitcom, Christopher Lloyd in the 1990s big-screen movies, and voiced by Nick Kroll in the recent animated films. Armisen said he wanted to continue with tradition rather than reinvent the character.
“I wasn’t thinking in terms of, ‘What can I bring to it to make it different?’ I thought, ‘No, I want the Jackie Coogan version. That’s the version I can hear.’ Christopher Lloyd’s is amazing too. I wanted to just keep it there,” Armisen says. “ I didn’t have any designs on, “Well, now I’m going to add this element …” No, this is someone who likes wearing those big coats, and is enjoying his own eccentricities.”
The primary selling point for him was Burton, who directed several episodes and executive-produced the show with creators Miles Millar and Alfred Gough. “He didn’t direct my episode, but I met with him and hung out with him. You could even say that was one of the main reasons to go all the way to Romania, to get to meet Tim Burton and hang out with him,” Armisen says. “He’s a huge part of my life. I think he’s a huge part of everybody’s life, the way that he’s made that aesthetic really part of the mainstream.”
Armisen’s Fester routine involved buzzing his head smooth every morning. “Then there would be a layer of makeup, then powder, just to make me look more pale, and then dark circles around my eyes,” he says. “They’d take a picture, and go to the director or the producers. They’d send a text or something. We’d wait a while, and then they would hear, ‘Okay, darker. They want it darker around their eyes.’ So, someone was watching.”
His head was really the only part of him that required an involved Fester treatment. “The wardrobe covered so much of me, even my neck, that very little else had to be done,” he says. “It was this big collar, and this big jacket. It was like wearing a curtain. It was thick and heavy, and there were little pointy shoes.”
He drew the line at removing his eyebrows. “Only because they said that it would take a while to grow in.”
Wednesday debuts on Netflix on Nov. 23rd.
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