Jenna Ortega says losing Percy Hynes White for ‘Wednesday’ season two has been a “weird redirect”

Jenna Ortega has admitted that losing Percy Hynes White on season two of Wednesday has been a “weird redirect”.

The Canadian actor played Xavier Thorpe in the Addams Family spin-off. In January 2023 a sexual misconduct allegation against him was made in a since-deleted post on X by an anonymous social media user.

The post claimed she had been sexually assaulted by Hynes White at a party he was hosting, and accused him of deliberately trying to get women drunk so they would have sex with him.

He later strenuously denied the allegations in an Instagram story, saying the “rumours were false”, describing it as a “campaign of misinformation”. No formal complaint was made against him.

Later that year, reports emerged that he had been written out of the second season of Netflix series.

It has since been confirmed that he will not be appearing in the second season and it will see Steve Buscemi and Billie Piper joining the show.

Now, Ortega, who is also starring in the film Winter Spring Summer Or Fall with Hynes White, told Vanity Fair that losing Hynes White’s character has been “a weird redirect, but we’re introducing so many different characters that I think it kind of will get lost.”

Wednesday’s “world does feel slightly askew anyway,” she added.

Her comments come after Winter Spring Summer Or Fall director Tiffany Paulsen recently defended Hynes White.

Filming on the project was completed in 2022, before the accusation surfaced against Hynes White in January 2023.

Addressing the situation at the time, Paulsen told Forbes: “We do know this is a touchy area and of course, it’s out there, so it would be hard not to discuss it on some level.”

She said that she was working on post-production on the film when the allegations emerged. “I just said, ‘Keep the noise away from me and I focused on finishing the movie’ and that’s where my focus remained,” she continued. “Getting through the movie and shutting off the noise.”

Paulsen went on to speak about her own experiences working with Hynes White. “To me, it’s a family and I look forward to working with him again,” she said. “I look forward to working with everybody on this movie again.”

“My focus was on my professional relationship with all of my actors and what I can say is he was absolutely lovely and beautiful and prepared, and open and trusting of me. I think his performance, honestly, is transcendent. He’s absolutely magical in this movie.”

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