Wednesday: Here’s Why Jenna Ortega Doesn’t Blink in Addams Family Spinoff

Actor Jenna Ortega has been earning acclaim for her take on the beloved daughter of the Addams Family in the spinoff series Wednesday, as she’s made a number of exciting and unexpected choices for her performance, one of which being that audiences don’t see her character blink. The official Netflix Twitter account recently shared that creator of the series Tim Burton took notice that Ortega didn’t blink during one take of a scene and was so impressed with the result that he then instructed Ortega not to blink when she was on screen. All eight episodes of Wednesday are now streaming on Netflix.

“After trying one take where she didn’t blink, Tim Burton was so enamored with the result he told Jenna Ortega not to blink anymore when playing Wednesday. So she didn’t,” the Netflix account tweeted. 

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The series is a sleuthing, supernaturally infused mystery charting Wednesday Addams’ years as a student at Nevermore Academy. Wednesday’s attempts to master her emerging psychic ability, thwart a monstrous killing spree that has terrorized the local town, and solve the supernatural mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago — all while navigating her new and very tangled relationships at Nevermore.  

This isn’t the only way Burton helped Ortega create the iconic character, as the nature of the series meant various directors would come on board the project and ask for different things from the performer, only for Burton to empower her to take ownership of the role.

“It’s like a fight, and you get to a point where, when you love and respect a character enough, all you want to do is protect them,” Ortega admitted during a conversation for Interview Magazine. “Another way they pitched the show to me was, ‘Oh, we’re trying to humanize her and make her so that she’s still relatable. But this isn’t like some cartoon.’ But it kind of is. I felt like sometimes in the attempt to make her a human girl, they were trying to make her any other teenage girl. I remember Tim being really wonderful about things like that and calling me to his trailer in the mornings and saying, ‘What are you uncomfortable saying? What do you want to say?’ When you have supportive collaborators like Tim, it makes it a lot easier. There were a couple people like that on set who were my rocks, for sure.”

All eight episodes of Wednesday are now streaming on Netflix.

What did you think of Ortega’s performance? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!