'Wednesday' creators say Netflix wanted to cut some of Jenna Ortega's darker lines but they pushed back: 'That's the whole point of the character'

• The showrunners of "Wednesday" said they had some pushback from Netflix executives over the script.
• A scene in which Wednesday says, "I do like stabbing," was asked to be cut out of the final edit.

The creators of the new series "Wednesday" said that Netflix originally wanted to cut some of the darker bits of dialogue from the new "The Addams Family" spinoff.

The show, which focuses on Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) during her time as a student at a magical boarding school known as Nevermore Academy, has been given an official age rating of TV-14 for its inclusion of offensive language, violence, and scenes of threat.

In a new interview with IndieWire, series creator Alfred Gough said while "Netflix was always very supportive and the executives were huge 'Addams Family' fans," there was some pushback on some of the scenes that encapsulated Wednesday's darkly comic humor.

His co-creator Miles Millar said: "We still did have executives wanting to cut some lines."

They cited a moment in the second episode in which Wednesday's roommate Enid (Emma Meyers) encourages her to "take a stab at being social." Wednesday quips back in her signature deadpan style: "I do like stabbing. The social part, not so much."

The reference to "stabbing" left the Netflix executives feeling uneasy, and they encouraged the creators to rethink including it, they said.

However, Millar and Gough said they stood their ground and successfully made a case for why it should stay.

"That's the whole point of the character," Millar told the outlet. "To lose that or dilute that is a betrayal of the character."

On top of that issue, the creators said there was also a lot of back and forth during the show's development over whether their titular character should attend a regular school or a magical academy.

"Because of the Harry Potter of it all [the question was] should she be at a regular school and then be a fish out of water?" Millar said. "But it felt kind of one-note and she'd always have to return home at night to the family that [we] wanted to get away from."

Co-directed and executive produced by Burton, "Wednesday" also stars Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Addams, Luis Guzmán as Gomez Addams, Fred Armisen as Uncle Fester, and Isaac Ordonez as Pugsley Addams.

Christina Ricci, who played Wednesday in the 1990s movies, also appears as Ms. Thornhill, a teacher at Nevermore.