Luis Guzman Gets The Nod As Gomez in Netflix’s Wednesday Addams Series

They might be creepy and they might be kooky, but there’s nothing mysterious or spooky about the cold hard cash The Addams Family IP just keeps on generating. After Charles Addams’s original cartoons were adapted into the widely syndicated 1964 television series, a lively film series reboot followed in the 1990’s, which begat a Tony Award-nominated Broadway show, an animated film and its sequel, set for release this October, and now the Netflix series Wednesday, centered around the Addams’s precocious and devilishly mischievous daughter. Cue the finger snaps!

And since no Addams Family project is worth the lick of a vesper bat’s tail without spot-on casting, it was undoubtedly important for Wednesday and its director, Tim Burton (yep, that Tim Burton, making his television directing debut) to give star Jenna Ortega (Jane the Virgin, Netflix’s You) some serious backup. So who’s stepping into the role John Astin, Raul Julia, and Osar Isaac’s voice made famous? Why, it’s veteran actor Luis Guzman as Gomez, of course.

The versatile, always memorable Guzman has appeared in Carlito’s Way, Boogie Nights, Out of Sight, and a steady stream of film and television roles dating back to the 1970’s and ‘80’s. Now 64, he’s an inspired choice for Gomez, and we can imagine how he’ll adapt his trademark cockeyed squint to play the lovably eccentric Addams family patriarch.

The description of Wednesday in Variety’s announcement of Guzman’s casting gives the series a Harry Potter vibe — Wednesday’s days as a student at Nevermore Academy are filled with explorations of her psychic ability, solving the mystery of a local killing spree, and getting to the bottom of the supernatural events surround her own family — so there should be plenty of opportunities to put a witch’s shawl on a broomstick and pay a visit to Guzman’s Gomez back at the family manse.