What Is Pugsley From The ’90s ‘Addams Family’ Movie Up To Now?

The Addams Family has been the spooky go-to classic since its 1938 introduction as a single-panel comic strip by Charles Addams in The New Yorker. It’s also been the subject of numerous adaptations ranging from television to the Broadway stage and the big screen. In terms of the latter, the first movie was a box office hit in 1991, The original movie, which is over thirty years old, was a box office hit in 1991, pulling in $191 million at the box office while costing only $30 million. Its 1993 sequel, Addams Family Values, was a disaster, grossing $49 million on a $47 million budget.

The stars of the iconic film include Christina Ricci, whose role as Wednesday launched her to stardom, as well as Angelica Huston and the late Raúl Juliá, who played legendary couple Morticia and Gomez Addams. But the scary family is not complete without Pugsley, Wednesday’s brother, played by Jimmy Workman, who was only eleven at the time of the first film.

‘The Addams Family’ was Jimmy’s first role

Jimmy’s role as Pugsley was his first and remains his most popular to date. Interestingly, he got the gig by accident when he accompanied his sister, who came to audition for the role of Wednesday. “We spotted him in the waiting room,” director Barry Sonnenfeld told The Guardian.

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He was a natural, so they looked no further to fill the role of Pugsley during the auditions. “I love doing the movie because I’ve never done one before, and it was a lot of fun to me. I met a lot of new people,” he said in 1991. He apparently performed so phenomenally that he reprised his role in the sequel, where he sang the famous “Eat Me” song in a giant turkey suit.

Jimmy quit acting in 2005

Jimmy’s last time on screen was on 2005’s The Biggest Fan, after which he quit acting because he grew older and lost up to forty pounds, so he could no longer land the stereotypical roles he did as a child star. His second role was in the Arnold Schwarzenegger-directed TV movie Christmas In Connecticut, after which he landed smaller parts.

Jimmy also mentioned that he had so much fun when, at the age of 18, he was able to access the money he made from The Addams Family. “I went through a stage where I went buck wild. I got all my partying out,” he said. Now, Jimmy works behind the scenes as a driver or transportation coordinator. He worked with the crew of 2009’s Star Trek and, more recently, The Last Manhunt in 2022.