Scream VI Star Jenna Ortega Reveals the Major Creative Clashes She Had Filming Netflix’s Wednesday

Scream VI star Jenna Ortega was already a bubbling talent thanks to roles in shows like Netflix’s You, and horror movies like X and Sream (2022), but her starring role in Netflix’s Addams Family spinoff Wednesday has catapulted her career to the next level. Wednesday was a major breakout hit for Netflix and a potentially lucrative franchise starter. However, as Jenna Ortega is now telling it, getting the fun Goth-tinged show that fan now love was actually much harder (especially on her) than anyone could’ve thought. 

In a new interview with actor Dax Shepard on his podcast Armchair Expert, Jenna Ortega opened up about how she had to take charge on the set of Wednesday when it came to finding the character. According to Ortega, the character of Wednesday didn’t feel correct to her on the page quite often, either in terms how teen authentic it was (or not), and how loyal it was (or not) to Wednesday Addams’ dry, Gothic, and even psychopathic outlook on the world:

“Everything that she does, everything that I had to play, did not make sense for her character at all,” Ortega revealed. “Her being in a love triangle made no sense. There was a line about this dress that she has to wear for a school dance and she says, ‘Oh my god, I love it! I can’t believe I said that. I literally hate myself.’ And I had to go, ‘No, there’s no way.’”

According to Ortega, the character was so “off” in her estimation that she had to take a stand when she “stopped trusting outside opinion” about the 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.” In a longer explanation of what when down on set, Ortega explained that she had to push the boundaries of on-set etiquette in order to force the changes that she wanted: “There were times on that set where I even became unprofessional in a sense where I just started changing lines,” Ortega said. “The script supervisor thought I was going with something, and then I would have to sit down with the writers and they’d be like, ‘Wait, what happened to the scene?’ And I would have to go through and explain why I couldn’t do certain things.”

The sense of insecurity in the character and show never left Ortega, even when Wednesday was released on Netflix: “I can’t watch my work, but I can go home from set and say, ‘The scene that we shot today felt good,’” Ortega said. “On Wednesday, there was not a scene in that show that I went home and was like, ‘OK, that should be fine.’”

In the end, she has never really gained much confidence in the show – even with the massive success of Wednesday, and the massive fan response. According to Ortega, audiences are “easy to please” with new and familiar content, and the work put into Wednesday “would elevate or maybe make a show more appealing to an audience.” 

Wednesday is streaming on Netflix. Jenna Ortega can be seen on the big screen in Scream VI.