“My sense of humor is maybe a bit too dark.”
By Ariana RomeroFeb 17, 2023
“I don’t know what it is about my face,” Jenna Ortega says. “But people always want to throw blood on it.” This might not be a quality that comes in handy for everyone, but it has for Ortega, who’s the latest incarnation of one of the most beloved goths of all time: Wednesday Addams.
The day Ortega met Oscar-nominated director Tim Burton, Miles Millar, and Alfred Gough — the creative trio who would cast her in Wednesday — she had been screaming bloody murder for 12 hours. She Zoomed with the transcontinental team from New Zealand, where she was shooting Ti West’s bloody horror romp X, glycerin and fake red gore still in her hair, and a prominent, prosthetic gash on her forehead. Usually, Ortega tries not to learn too much about the people she’s auditioning for, to avoid getting stuck in her head. But that isn’t possible when one of those people has directed everything from Beetlejuice to Corpse Bride; in Wednesday’s case, Burton would serve as executive producer and director. Luckily, Ortega hadn’t slept in 24 hours, and was feeling loopy enough to just “wing it.”
Kelia Anne MacCluskey/Netflix
“I think it made Tim laugh,” says Ortega; that talent will serve her well when she hosts Saturday Night Live on March 11. Ortega, 20, performed just two scenes for her Wednesday audition. In one, Wednesday throws explosives into a lake during a morbid sibling bonding session with her little brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez); in the other, her character verbally skewers the disembodied hand/companion Thing, a favorite pastime of the sharp-witted teen. The call was fast, despite its importance. Not long after it, Ortega would pack her bags and move to Romania for more than six months to film Wednesday, all based on this “fairly simple” 20-minute interaction.
While an invitation to be the latest iteration of Wednesday Addams might seem like an automatic yes, after years on television, Ortega had “sworn off” the medium in favor of film. “But when you’re approached with a character like this, and a director like this, and a story like this, it’s very compelling,” she says. “You don’t know when you’re going to get the opportunity to do something like that again. I knew that I just had to take it.”
Even before Ortega started reading her audition lines that fateful day, it was clear from her intensity and intelligence that she was the one — the actor who would save the project from Burton’s biggest concern, that it would end up “dead in the water” without the right star.
Ortega says she has “always” been compared to Wednesday, whom she first encountered at age 8 or 9 via the ’90s Addams Family films. Ortega chalks up the comparisons to her natural sarcasm and “very dry” humor. “People never know whether or not I’m being serious,” she says. “My sense of humor is a bit awkward at times, and maybe a bit too dark.”
Vlad Cioplea/Netflix
Not too dark, surely, for Nevermore Academy, Wednesday’s boarding school. The eerie institution is home to all kinds of supernatural teen creatures, including werewolves, sirens, gorgons and psychics. Nevermore is also the alma mater of her parents, the ravenously amorous Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Gomez Addams (Luis Guzmán); like any 15-year-old, Wednesday resents following in her mom and dad’s footsteps.
But, if anyone was destined to follow their own path in life, it’s Wednesday, who is also an amateur mystery writer, and finds a story of her own when grisly paranormal murders begin occuring around Nevermore and the surrounding normie county of Jericho. Naturally, Wednesday decides she’s the only one who can solve the case.
Plus, proud loner Wednesday has begun to connect with classmates like her lupine roommate Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers) and brooding heartthrob Xavier Thorpe (Percy Hynes White), making Wednesday our first chance to really understand the emotional twists and turns of a character who first emerged in cartoons drawn nearly a century ago. This Wednesday is complicated in the way only a teen girl can be — she fears emotions and undefined gray areas more than spiders or bloodthirsty monsters — and there’s more to her than just a cool facade.
“Someone like Wednesday seems very one tone. But there are a lot of different routes that you could take with someone like her,” Ortega says. She filmed “flat” versions of scenes, along with expressive ones and energetic ones, to explore different dimensions of the character and bring a sense of “reality” to Wednesday, whom viewers have only ever previously glimpsed as a young girl.
“Adding those layers of insecurity or those lived-in qualities that make a teenager a teenager is really interesting,” Ortega says. “Especially with a character that we’ve never gotten the opportunity to know well enough, because she’s always been the one-liner, off to the side with a funny punchline. To actually have real frustration and uncertainty was really interesting to play and discover.”
The experience was rewarding for Ortega, whose recent roles share Wednesday’s affinity for the ghastlier side of life. There is, of course, her aforementioned blood-soaked turn in X as Lorraine, an adult film boom mic operator. She’s also the too-cool-for-school heroine of 2020’s The Babysitter: Killer Queen and the face of the touchstone horror franchise Scream, which will debut another slasher film this spring. But Ortega counts Wednesday as a welcome evolution from her other roles.
“Wednesday is naturally so different from who I would play in a horror film. I play the girl that makes the stupid decision to open the door and ask who’s there,” she explains, laughing. “Meanwhile, Wednesday has probably already set up a booby trap, or has a bear [trap] waiting outside on the patio.”
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‘‘Everybody wishes they were as bold as Wednesday.’’
Wednesday’s hyper-competency is another trait that separates her from many other supernatural YA leading ladies (no one’s braided pigtails will ever hold a black candle to hers). She’s no newcomer to the occult world and has probably read every book on the subject in five languages already, thanks to her wily Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen). She also has no problem sparring with the adults around her, particularly Nevermore’s Principal Larissa Weems, played by Gwendoline Christie. Weems was also Morticia’s roommate during their teenage years, adding another unexpected dimension to her relationship with Wednesday.
“I loved working with Jenna so much,” says Christie. “It’s a wonderful and rare opportunity when you meet an actor, where you are going to be involved in really intense scenes, and the pair of you are as dedicated as each other… Playing those scenes in Weems’ office were some of my absolute favorites because we could push each other, and we could find these different layers and textures to the relationship that we hadn’t ever envisaged. It’s quite fascinating and very odd and I loved every minute of it.”
While the fantasy genre is peppered with precocious youths and powerful authority figures, few of these connections are built on such equal measures of admiration, antagonism and history.
“It’s such a weird relationship,” Christie continues, “and one that we don’t often see, of an older woman who’s in charge of a young woman — a 16-year-old — and they develop a strange intensity, a weird bond; a really unusual, complex, constantly evolving relationship that has its intimacy in the oddest of ways.” It’s the kind of partnership that can only work if the younger woman has the wherewithal to stand up to injustice and subvert authority when needed.
In a cultural landscape lacking in Latinx girl representation, Ortega is thrilled to bring this confidence to the first canonically Mexican-American version of Wednesday. While previous adaptations of Charles Addams’ unnamed cartoon characters flirted with Spanish and Latinx representation — ’60s TV patriarch John Astin first used the name “Gomez,” and legendary Puerto Rican actor Raúl Juliá indelibly played the character in the first two ’90s films —Wednesday celebrates the Latin heritage of cast members like Ortega (who has Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage) and Guzmán (who was born in Puerto Rico).
Ortega is simply happy that Wednesday is helping to give “an accurate representation of what the real world looks like” — or at least something as close to the “real world” that a fantasy drama filled with magic and monsters can be. The series isn’t checking any boxes, it’s simply reflecting the real-life fact that smart, sarcastic Latinx teens with great bangs already exist out there, mystical abilities or not.
Kelia Anne MacCluskey/Netflix
“To give young Latin people someone to relate to on-screen and give them that boost of self-esteem, or relatability and comfort in characters, is so special and so wonderful,” Ortega says. “But [Wednesday is] also for everyone. Everyone should be able to see themselves in anyone.”
Ortega certainly saw more of Wednesday in herself than ever before. Playing the role even changed her behavior, on set and in her personal life. “It was a very freeing, gratifying experience, because you don’t have to care. If you’re in a bad mood, and you have a stink face, it doesn’t matter,” she says. “She sticks to her guns, and she’s not out to please anybody. Which, as someone who used to be an immense people pleaser, I really respect.” There are few things more bold than learning of an unearthly murder mystery and inserting yourself directly in the midst of the carnage in search of the truth. Ever the soul sister to her character, Ortega couldn’t help but crack the case long before it was revealed in the Wednesday scripts. “I remember the writers pulled me aside, and they were like, ‘So the monster is…’ And I almost said it for them,” Ortega says casually. “I didn’t question it at all. I knew where they were going.”
When Wednesday snaps back for Season 2, will you?
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