We caught up with actress Carrie Hope Fletcher, who plays the role of Wednesday Addams in the UK tour of The Addams Family, which heads to the Wolverhampton Grand Theatre this October.

With her upbeat, playful and down-to-earth persona, and the warmth, wit and wisdom she imparts to her scores of young fans, multi-talented singer, actor, writer and internet sensation Carrie Hope Fletcher has been described as everyone’s favourite big sister. Lately, however, she’s been appearing as a big sister of a rather different ilk, starring as the borderline-psychotic Wednesday Addams in the UK tour of Andrew Lippa’s Addams Family musical. 
Straight black pigtails and scathing, deadpan looks make quite a change from the bright, curly-haired Carrie that we’re used to seeing. But is this really the first time she’s been in touch with her dark side? With the show soon to arrive in Wolverhampton, we asked her whether she’d ever ‘gone goth’ before.
“I did!” she laughs. “I had a real emo phase when I was about 14. I wore lots of Hellbunny clothing, black lace, skulls and crossbones and stripy purple and black hoodies with cat ears on the hood. I was really into My Chemical Romance. In fact, just today, when I was peeking out of the Addams Family letterbox before the beginning of Act Two, I spotted a girl on the front row wearing a My Chemical Romance hoodie. It made me really happy!”
With her angsty teenage years now behind her, Wednesday Addams is pretty far removed from parts that Carrie’s accustomed to today. Happily, the Carrie fanbase seems to have accepted Wednesday in all her wonderful weirdness. 
“They’ve taken to her much more than I expected - everyone seems to really love her! I think it’s partly because she’s 18, and the majority of my online audience is between the ages of 18 and 24, so they can identify with her. She’s great because she’s such an advocate for being confident and being who you are no matter what anyone says. There’s a great line she sings in Crazier Than You which just sums her up so well: ‘I’m crazier than you, so get on board or simply move along.’”
The version of Wednesday Carrie plays in the production is a bit older than previous incarnations - a fully fledged 18-year-old starting to assert her independence. Of course, she’s never been one to stand for any mollycoddling or pay much heed to rules, but there are some lines that you simply don’t cross - and one of them is falling for a boy like Lucas Beineke. Thankfully, his relative ‘ordinariness’ doesn’t seem to have rubbed off on Wednesday too much, even if she does get overly worked up about how her ‘meet the parents’ dinner will play out.
“The thing about her is that instead of getting gooey and lovey-dovey, she gets crazy. You know when you see a kitten that’s so cute that you want to hurt it? That’s Wednesday to a tee. She loves Lucas so much, she wants to kill him, almost! 
“But I also think that she’s attracted to the fact that she can look after him. Lucas loves the darker side of life, but he’s still quite a vulnerable, normal boy who is very out of his depth with her. I think she likes that she gets to stand in front of him wielding her crossbow, daring anyone to call him a dork. We always joke that she would never become Wednesday Beineke, it would always be Lucas becoming an Addams. Over time, I think he’ll definitely become more like them - I don’t think he has any choice!”
Indeed, the process seems already to be underway in the song Crazier Than You, a turning point both for Wednesday and Lucas and for Lucas’ overwhelmed parents, Mal and Alice. But while the characters battle it out to claim the title on stage, behind the scenes, says Carrie, it’s Cameron Blakely, who plays her father, Gomez, who’s the craziest. “He’s basically the same person on and off stage, just minus the Spanish accent!”
Carrie got her first taste of the show’s music much earlier than her co-stars, having originally been invited to sing one of the songs, Pulled, in an Andrew Lippa concert. So enamoured was she by the idea of the show that she begged to be first in line for auditions if it ever came to the UK.
“I knew it wouldn’t be exactly the same as the Broadway version because I’d heard that there’d been a few changes, so when I read it I was just so excited to find out what our story would be. I actually got the script about three or four weeks before we started rehearsals, and I was just itching to get to work straight away - it was everything I expected and more!”
Alongside her demanding role in the show, Carrie’s also found time to promote her latest novel, All That She Can See, which was published in July. Conveniently, she’s been able to sync up her stage tour with visits to bookshops near to the venues. 
“It’s been going really well. I had just over 200 people turn up to my signing in Manchester - and what’s really nice is that a lot of the people who came had either been to see The Addams Family or were coming to see it, so it’s lovely to be able to talk to them about that.”
As if that wasn’t enough, she’s already writing something new, though won’t reveal details yet...
“You’ll just have to wait and see!” she exclaims.

Carrie Hope Fletcher stars in The Addams Family at Wolverhampton Grand Theatre from Tuesday 17 to Saturday 21 October.