Grandmama (The Addams Family)

Grandmama (The Addams Family)

Grandmama is a fictional character within The Addams Family, created by cartoonist Charles Addams.

Grandmama is the grandmother of the Addams children, Pugsley and Wednesday Addams, although her relationship to the other family members is somewhat inconsistent in the various incarnations of the family. In Charles Addams' original The New Yorker cartoon strips, the character was referred to as Grandma Frump, therefore making her Morticia's mother. For the original television series — as well as The New Addams Family, in which she is named Eudora Addams — her relationship to the family is retconned and she becomes Gomez's mother. However, both the feature films and animated television series conform to Charles Addams' original concept of Grandmama as Wednesday's and Pugsley's maternal grandmother. In the first film, Morticia and Gomez discuss how "Mother and Father Addams" were killed by an angry mob, removing any possibility that Grandmama could be Gomez's and Fester's mother. In the third film, in which she is named Esmeralda, she is again implied to come from Morticia's family. The character is simply referred to as Granny in the two animated series. In the second episode of the 1992 series, Grandmama introduces herself with the line, "the name's Granny Frump", while the following episode references Gomez's parents, Mother and Father Addams.

Grandmama is known for her cynical—and sometimes morbid—sense of humor and her recreational interest in the occult. She is often shown concocting various potions, spells and hexes for a multitude of purposes, and even dabbles in fortune-telling. In the episode "Halloween, Addams Style," when a neighbor claims to have seen a witch on the family's roof, she declares this untrue as she was just up there herself and saw no one, indicating that she does not consider herself a "witch" by the standards the family follows. One of her favorite hobbies is wrestling alligators. She is probably best recognized for her gray frizzy hair and her shawl.