Jenna Ortega: I changed the lines on the “Wednesday” scripts because some of them made “no sense”

Jenna Ortega thinks there was something downright weird about her time on “Wednesday.”

The ‘Scream’ star, who became a household name thanks to the Netflix series, expressed his complicated feelings about his breakout role on Monday’s episode of Dax Shepard’s ‘Armchair Expert’.” podcast.

Ortega explained about 37 minutes into the episode that despite his growing public persona of being an actual Wednesday Addams, the character and tone of the show were completely outside of his comfort zone. She described herself as “naturally a very expressive person” who is not a big fan of teen shows, saying the genre is “not usually the kind of TV I would watch”.

“I can’t watch my work, but I can go home after filming and say, ‘The scene we shot today was good,’” Ortega said. “[On] ‘Wednesday’ there wasn’t a scene on that show where I came home and was like, ‘OK, you should be fine’.

Ortega said that feeling wasn’t his “proudest moment internally” and admitting his earlier doubts about the project added an “extra level of insecurity and stress.”

“Because it’s like I’m finally getting these deals in these places that I wanted, but I don’t want to be known specifically for [playing Wednesday],” she says.

Ortega said she was initially unsure what kind of show she would do.

“When I read the whole series, I realized, ‘Oh, this is for a younger audience,’” Ortega said. “When I first signed up for the show, I didn’t have all the scripts. I thought it was going to be a lot darker. It wasn’t…I didn’t know what the tone was. , I had no idea what the score would look like, or how it would be put together.

Ortega also highlighted the disconnect she felt playing an established character who is known for being monotonous, morbid and funny – whereas as an actress she wanted Wednesday to be more three-dimensional than how the character read in the script.

Ortega as the titular “Wednesday”.

“I became very, very protective of her,” Ortega said of Wednesday. “You can’t have a story and have no emotional arc because then it’s boring and nobody likes you.”

She then appeared to compare her Wednesday turn as a teenager to Christina Ricci’s portrayal of the child character in the “Addams Family” movies in the 1990s.

“When you’re little and you say very morbid, offensive things, it’s funny and endearing. But then you become a teenager and it’s mean and you know it. There are fewer excuses, “said said Ortega.

The “You” actor explained how this desire to portray a more complex Wednesday led her to be quite vocal about her character during filming.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had to set foot more on set in a way that I had to on ‘Wednesday,’” Ortega said. “Everything she did, everything I had to play, made no sense for her character. She’s in a love triangle? It made no sense. There was a line about a dress she was supposed to wear to a dance at school and she said, ‘Oh my god, I love that. Ugh, I can’t believe I said that. I literally hate myself. had to say ‘No’.

“There were times on this set where I even went almost unprofessional, in a sense, where I just started changing lines,” she continued. “The writer thought I was going with something, and then I had to sit down with the writers, and they were like, ‘Wait, what happened to the scene? And I should go and explain why I couldn’t go and do certain things.

Tim Burton and Ortega on the set of “Wednesday”.

Ortega has been candid in the past about the anxiety she felt while filming “Wednesday.” She said Interview magazine in October 2022 that the show’s creator, Tim Burton, didn’t direct every episode, and the constant change at the helm left him feeling “like everyone wanted different things from” the character of Wednesday.

She said that when Burton realized he “didn’t want me to have any expression or emotion at all”.

“He wanted a flat surface, which I understand,” she said. “It’s funny and great, except when you’re trying to move a plot forward, and Wednesday is in every scene.”

She told Interview that this led to “a lot of battles” on set.

“I felt like people didn’t always trust me when I was creating my path in terms of, ‘Okay, that’s his arc. This is where she gets emotional,” Ortega said. “I was completely lost and confused. Usually I have no problem using my voice, but when you get there, I just remember feeling defeated after the first month.

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