In a new interview with Vanity Fair, Jenna Ortega reflected on the controversial comments she made in March 2023 about changing her character’s lines on Netflix’s “Wednesday,” admitting, “I probably could have used my words better in describing all of that. I think, oftentimes, I’m such a rambler. I think it was hard because I felt like had I represented the situation better, it probably would’ve been received better.”
On a March 2023 episode of Dax Shepard and Monica Padman’s “Armchair Expert” podcast, Ortega said that many of the original “Wednesday” scripts made no sense to her from a character perspective, and that she changed dialogue without consulting the show’s writers.
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She said at the time: “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,’” she continued. “Everything that Wednesday 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 says, ‘Oh my god I love it. Ugh, I can’t believe I said that. I literally hate myself.’ 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. 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’d have to go and explain why I couldn’t go do certain things.”
Ortega’s comments drew backlash from film and TV writers, who went on strike against the studios two months later. Many Hollywood scribes took to social media to call out Ortega for being “toxic” and “beyond entitled,” and on the picket lines, some Writers Guild of America members carried signs with slogans such as “Without writers, Jenna Ortega will have nothing to punch up!”
“Everything that I said felt so magnified … It felt almost dystopian to me,” Ortega, who is now 21 years old, told Vanity Fair. “I felt like a caricature of myself.”
She told the magazine that the media snafu taught her a valuable lesson: “You’re never going to please everybody, and as someone who naturally was a people pleaser, that was really hard for me to understand. Some people just may not like you … and that’s entirely fine.”
Ortega said that even she got “sick of myself last year,” adding: “My face was everywhere … so it’s like, fair enough, if I were opening my phone and I saw the same girl with some stupid quote or something, I would be over it too.”
Vanity Fair writer Michelle Ruiz suggested to Ortega that even after #MeToo empowered women to advocate for themselves in Hollywood, many people continue to respond to such instances with contempt. Ortega agreed: “I feel like we definitely need to practice what we preach a little bit more … Women have to be princesses. They have to be elegant and classy and so kind and …then when they’re outspoken, they can’t be tamed and they’re a mess.”
Now, Ortega serves as a producer on the upcoming second season of “Wednesday,” where she is encouraged to give notes. Executive producer and director Tim Burton told Vanity Fair that Ortega is “very direct. She’s very no-nonsense, and I find that very refreshing and beautiful and artistic.” He even suggested that Ortega “could direct [the series] if she wanted to,” adding, “I saw, from day one, she’s very aware. She’s more aware, sometimes, than I am.”
Season 2 of “Wednesday” is expected to arrive on Netflix sometime in 2025.
