Wednesday star Catherine Zeta-Jones reveals her scenes with Joanna Lumley are “nothing like” her relationship with her own mother
"The Addams family is the ultimate model family," says the Wednesday actor. "It encourages the difference and nurtures the quirkiness."
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
Having children is one of the most amazing joys of my life,” Catherine Zeta-Jones says emphatically – which is to say, sounding a little more Welsh than usual – on a balmy June afternoon from Bilbao. Did she always want children? “I’ve always wanted kids, yeah. Though not like my cousin. She was always saying she wanted babies. Baby mad! And she did. Though she only had one in the end.”
Not that motherhood was all sunshine and lollipops. When I ask Zeta-Jones if she was ever a bit of a gloomy Wednesday, she announces, “Absolutely not!” and says she was much more of an Enid, Wednesday’s bubbly best friend (played by Emma Myers) who always looks on the bright side: “I saw the rainbows more than the dark.” Motherhood, though, changed all that.
“All of a sudden, I saw doom and gloom everywhere. My husband would be throwing them up in the air and I’d be thinking, ‘We have ceiling fans! They’ll be decapitated!’ I started to see the worst-case scenarios everywhere. But I think that’s just getting older and thinking ‘Ooh, what if?’”
Catastrophising aside, Zeta-Jones says, “the world is terrifying for grown-ups and children alike. Me and my husband say to our kids, ‘Sorry, but it’s up to you guys. Your generation has a lot of strong views, strong values and strong opinions and you have to get out and vote to make changes, to be the change and try and put us back on an equilibrium.”
Did becoming a parent make her re-evaluate her own parents? “Definitely. My mother brought up three kids. She had no help. My brother was judo, my other brother was swimming, I was dancing. I was part of the amateur dramatics, the Dylan Thomas Theatre, I’m sure there was gymnastics thrown in there at some point… Just taking us to all of that, as a parent you think, ‘Oh my gosh,’ whereas as a kid you’re p****d off that she was five minutes late in picking you up that one time.”
Zeta-Jones says she loves the relationship that her children have with her own parents. “I’m adamant that they go back to Wales every year to be with their grandparents for two weeks,” she says, proudly. “Nana and Grampy’s rules!”
She adds, “They’ve been to Butlin’s, Legoland, seen the sights in London, up to Scotland, over to Ireland. They’ve even been to the Isle of Man, I think.” Certainly, anyone who follows either Carys or Dylan on Instagram can attest to their sojourns to Wales over the years.
“As a parent, you guide them, you give them the best, broadest options, you don’t smother them, you put them into situations where you hope they see the reality of the world. And you hope they become good citizens of the planet.”
You might be tempted to ask Zeta-Jones if being a mother was the role of a lifetime, the part that she was born to play. But let’s keep things in perspective. In 2010, Zeta-Jones won a Tony for playing Desirée Armfeldt in Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece A Little Night Music – her Broadway debut. Clearly, that is the role of a lifetime that she was born to play.
We are talking motherhood and parenting because Zeta-Jones returns, in magnificent form, as Morticia Addams, mother to Wednesday. To her daughter, Morticia is something of an antagonist, but adults, and parents in particular, might see her more sympathetically, as a mother demonised for doing her best as she deals with a wilful, wily daughter who doesn’t know what she doesn’t know.
After the wildly successful first season, Zeta-Jones plays a bigger part in the second with the arrival of Joanna Lumley as Hester Frump, Morticia’s own mother. While Wednesday and Hester get on, Morticia and Hester’s relationship is a little more fractious – so Zeta-Jones gets to play both a mother and a daughter.
“The scenes we play together are like magic,” she says. “Jenna brings her A-game and Joanna and I bring ours. We wanted to show the truth of the relationships and keep them as real as possible. The relationship I have with Wednesday is nothing like the relationship I have with my daughter, but I’ve seen other mothers have that relationship with their daughters. My relationship with Hester is nothing like my relationship with my mother but I know people who do have that relationship. So, it’s all rooted in truth and that’s what makes it so relatable.
"I think the Addams family is the ultimate model family. It encourages the difference, nurtures the quirkiness. It says that being an outcast is good and that’s what makes you who you are. When you think about it, it’s a very modern way of thinking.”
Zeta-Jones is in Bilbao because she’s four months into filming Kill Jackie, an epic, hugely expensive, explosively action-packed revenge thriller series for Amazon Prime in which she plays the title role. This afternoon, though, she’s not working. It’s her first time off in four weeks.
“I’m working now until next July and it’s the only time in my career that I’ve known what I’m doing that far ahead,” she says. “It’s actually really nice, because I can tell my family where I’m gonna be – and the good thing about being at this point in my career is not having to keep at it just to be at it, you know?”
Getting to this point in her career where she is able to cherry-pick roles but still being busy and with an Oscar and a Tony on her mantelpiece has taken hard graft. “Dancer’s grit,” Zeta-Jones, who started out in musical theatre, calls it. “When I was younger, my ambition and my drive were absolutely essential. You don’t come from Wales to where I am now without that.
"In my early career, you take what you’re given – or you take the best of the bunch. Obviously there are things you just don’t take, but you buy for the better pieces and what comes your way, you foment and guide yourself into a career. Because you’d rather be working and be seen than not. Then there are lulls – there are always lulls – and then your next chapter starts and everything you’ve done prior stands you in good stead for whatever comes next.”
Zeta-Jones is well-versed in chapters and lulls, highs and lows. Following her breakthrough role in ITV’s The Darling Buds of May and mid-1990s move to America, she struck $250m of box-office gold with 1998 blockbuster romp The Mask of Zorro, and married Michael Douglas in 2000. She won the 2003 best supporting actress Oscar for Chicago and gained critical acclaim for the Coen brothers’ Intolerable Cruelty opposite George Clooney in 2003.
But among the gems there were also flops – Lay the Favorite (2012) starring Bruce Willis and Broken City (2013) with Russell Crowe among them. And her diagnosis with bipolar disorder also meant sabbaticals from acting.
Today, Zeta-Jones is definitely on the upswing, her mood buoyed, her outlook rosy. “I want to work with people who are kind and sweet and creative, and I’m looking forward to doing smaller budget films with interesting roles. And in the last month, I’ve been offered three plays. Maybe it’s just where I am in my life but now, if the choice is living to work or working to live, it’s the latter. It’s definitely the latter.”
The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here.
Wednesday season 2 is streaming from Wednesday 6 August on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.
Check out more of our Fantasy coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Authors
