Why Christopher Lloyd Thought He Was Being Replaced In The Addams Family

My favorite comic strips are the ones where the characters' physicality has no basis in reality. Think of Calvin's untenable head-to-body-size ratio in "Calvin and Hobbes" or how every living creature in "The Far Side" (humans, cows, bears, you name it) is built like a pillow with sticks for arms and legs. The funny pages, like animation, have no real limits when it comes to the physics of their worlds, so why should their inhabitants be any different?

Charles Addams, in particular, wholly embraced this idea and ran with it while drawing his off-kilter, satirical "Addams Family" comic panels for The New Yorker from the 1930s up until his death in the '80s. The titular clan of ghoulish aristocrats embodied everything that stereotypical white American families did not in the 20th century (including, in perhaps their most biting bit of social commentary, being genuinely affectionate towards one another), which manifested itself in their appearances. The Addamses had preternaturally oblong or round faces and builds. Most notably, the stocky, pale-white Uncle Fester had sunken eyes and a bald head that was so round that he seemed to have little to no neck.

Jackie Coogan recreated this look about as well as a real-life person could with only practical makeup as Fester in the '60s "Addams Family" live-action TV show. However, when Christopher Lloyd was cast in the role for director (and pillow fort architect) Barry Sonnenfeld's 1991 live-action "Addams Family" movie, he was far from confident he could pull it off, and justifiably so; with his long, slender features, the "Back to the Future" actor doesn't look at all like the cartoon version of Fester made real. So much so, in fact, that an otherwise innocuous coincidence left him convinced he was being replaced in the film.  

Lloyd loved Fester from Charles Addams' comics when he was younger, as he admitted to Buzzfeed during a 2013 retrospective to mark the 20th anniversary of Sonnenfeld's second "Addams Family" feature and one of the all-time greatest sequels (that's not a hot take, right?), "Addams Family Values." But again, as much as he adored the character, he just didn't look the part at all. Even after the film's makeup team applied prosthetics to his face — "to give me that round look," as Lloyd put it — to go with his shaved head, the actor was still concerned about being fired.

Those fears were only amplified when Lloyd got a call to meet with Sonnenfeld and producer Scott Rudin:

"There was a sound of concern in their voices. And, of course, I was panicked. I remember arriving at their offices and there was a guy who, without doing anything to himself, looked exactly like Uncle Fester. He was roly-poly, he was bald, he just had the look. And I thought, 'Oh jeez. He's the guy they've decided [to replace me with].'"

Much to Lloyd's relief, that wasn't the case; Sonnenfeld and Rudin merely wanted him to lose the prosthetics. "They thought the prosthetics were limiting my facial expressions, so we chucked the prosthetics ... and I was very, very relieved," he explained. They were right, too. Lloyd might not have an exceptionally round face as Fester, but he more than makes up the difference in the "Addams Family" movies with his erratic physical gestures, cartoonish expressions, and growly voice. In doing so, he brings the character to appropriately outlandish life, just in a different way than the comic strips do.

The moral of the story? There's more than one way to faithfully adapt a character from one medium to another.