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Lisa Loring, the first actress known for portraying on TV Wednesday Addams in the original “The Addams Family” sitcom, died at 64. Her daughter, Vanessa Foumberg, confirmed the news of her passing; she shared a statement via Variety. Foumberg revealed her mother died of a stroke on Saturday, January 28, 2023. “She went peacefully with both her daughters holding her hands,” Foumberg said.
As informed by CNN, Laurie Jacobson, Loring’s friend, said on Facebook she had “suffered a massive stroke brought on by smoking and high blood pressure.”
“She had been on life support for 3 days. Yesterday, her family made the difficult decision to remove it and she passed last night,” Jacobson wrote. “She is embedded in the tapestry that is pop culture and in our hearts always as Wednesday Addams.”
Loring was cast in the sitcom “The Addams Family” in 1964. She took on the role when she was six years old and played the iconic character for two years. In 1977, she appeared as Wednesday in “Halloween with the New Addams Family.”
The Addams Family is a fictional family created by American cartoonist Charles Addams and initially published in The New Yorker in 1938. Charles’ comic was created as a satirical inversion of the ideal 20th-century American family.
After publishing the macabre comic strip for 50 years, for the first time in 1964, people could see Gomez, Morticia Wednesday, Pugsley, Uncle Fester, Grandmama, Lurch, and Thing in a human form.
Loring paved the way for other actresses, including Christina Ricci, who starred as Wednesday in the 1991 hit movie “The Addams Family” and its sequel, “Addams Family Values,” and before Jenna Ortega was the most recognizable face of the franchise.
In 2022, Jenna Ortega took over as the first Latina to play the role, as part of Tim Burton’s Netflix comedy horror “Wednesday.” According to the star, Loring inspired her performance and iconic dance in the series.
“I paid homage to Lisa Loring, the first Wednesday Addams. I did a little bit of her shuffle that she does,” Ortega said during an appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” in December 2022.