Jenna Ortega: I Changed Lines On ‘Wednesday’ Scripts Because Some Made ‘No Sense’

Jenna Ortega feels there was one thing altogether ooky about her time on “Wednesday.”

The “Scream” star, who grew to become a family identify due to the Netflix collection, expressed her difficult emotions about her breakout function on Monday’s episode of Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast.

Ortega defined about 37 minutes into the episode that regardless of her rising public persona of being a real-life Wednesday Addams, the character and the tone of the present had been utterly outdoors of her consolation zone. She described herself as “naturally a very expressive person” who isn’t an enormous fan of minor exhibits, saying the style is “typically not the kind of TV I’d watch.”

“I can’t watch my work, but I can go home from set and say, ‘The scene that we shot today felt good,’” Ortega stated. “[On] ‘Wednesday’ there was not a scene in that show that I went home and was like, ‘OK, that should be fine.’”

Ortega stated that this sense wasn’t her “proudest moment internally” and admitting her earlier doubts in regards to the venture added an “extra level of insecurity and stress.”

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

Ortega stated she was initially unaware of what sort of present she’d be making.

“When I read the entire series, I realized, ‘Oh, this is for younger audiences,’” Ortega stated. “When I first signed on to 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 didn’t know what the score would sound like, or how it would be cut together.”

Ortega additionally emphasised the disconnect she felt taking part in a well-established character who’s recognized to be monotonous, morbid and droll — when as an actor she wished Wednesday to be extra three-dimensional than how the character learn within the script.

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

She then appeared to check her flip as Wednesday as a youngster to Christina Ricci’s portrayal of the character as a baby within the “Addams Family” films within the Nineties.

“When you are little and say very morbid, offensive stuff, it’s funny and endearing. But then you become a teenager and it’s nasty and you know it. There’s less of an excuse,” Ortega stated.

The “You” actor defined how this need to painting a extra advanced Wednesday led her to be fairly vocal about her character whereas filming.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had to put my foot down more on a set in a way that I had to on ‘Wednesday,’” Ortega stated. “Everything that she does, everything I had to play, did not make sense for her character at all. Her being in a love triangle? It made no sense. There was a line about a dress she has to wear for a school dance and she said, ‘Oh my god, I love it. Ugh, I can’t believe I said that. I literally hate myself.’ And I had to go, ‘No.’”

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

Ortega has been candid prior to now in regards to the nervousness she felt whereas filming “Wednesday.” She informed Interview journal in October 2022 that the present’s creator, Tim Burton, didn’t direct each episode, and the fixed change on the helm left her feeling “like everybody wanted different things from” the character of Wednesday.

She stated that when Burton directed, he “did not want me to have any expression or emotion at all.”

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

She informed 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, this is her arc. This is where she gets emotional,’” Ortega stated. “I was completely lost and confused. Typically I have no problem using my voice, but when you’re in it — I just remember feeling defeated after the first month.”