Jenna Ortega says she turned down ‘Wednesday’ role “a couple” of times
Wednesday star Jenna Ortega has revealed that she turned down the hit role “a couple” of times before accepting.
Ortega plays lead character Wednesday Addams in the hit 2022 Netflix TV show from Tim Burton, but has revealed that it wasn’t an easy decision.
Speaking to The Sunday Times, Ortega said she wanted to steer clear of the role initially because she’s “done so much TV in my life” and “all I’ve ever wanted to do is film.”
that, when she was initially approached via email about playing Wednesday Addams in the show, she turned it down.
“I got the email, passed on it,” she revealed, detailing how even after she met with Burton to discuss the role, she still said no “a couple times” more.
“The only reason I went back is because Tim is such a legend, and we just happened to get along very well,” she added. “But even then I said, ‘Ah, no – I think I’m OK,’ a couple times.”
In a recent interview, Ortega revealed how she “became almost unprofessional” while on set for the hit Netflix series.
On the March 6 episode of the Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard podcast, Ortega shared that she had gotten involved with the script’s writing while on set for the show, at times even butting heads with the script supervisor because she felt “very, very protective” of her character.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had to put my foot down on a set in the way that I had to on Wednesday because it’s so easy to fall into that category, especially with this type of show,” Ortega said of her initial pushback on the script.
She would elaborate: “Everything that she does, everything that I had to play, did not make sense for her character at all. Her being in a love triangle made no sense. There was a line about like, this dress that 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’s no way.’”
“There was times on that set where I even became almost unprofessional, in a sense, where I just started changing lines. The script supervisor thought that I was going with something, and then I would have to sit down with the writers and they would be like, ‘Wait, what happened to the scene?’ And I would to have to go through and explain why I couldn’t do certain things,” she said.
Ortega, who most recently starred in Scream VI, was the host for last night’s (March 11) episode of Saturday Night Live.
During her opening monologue Ortega spoke about her “crazy” couple of years starring in Wednesday, X, and most recently Scream 6.
“A lot of people assume I’m dark and twisted in real life because of those roles that I play but I’m not like that at all,” said Ortega. “I think there’s just something about my face where people see it and say ‘Hey, let’s throw blood on that’.”
Elsewhere, the star is reportedly in talks to reunite with Tim Burton for a role in Beetlejuice 2.
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Will Richards
NME
