Wednesday became a huge hit for Netflix late last year, but one surprising person is not amongst its fans, or even its viewers. Jenna Ortega stars on Wednesday as the titular character, but in a new interview, she shared that she doesn't feel proud of the show and will never watch it herself.
The Addams Family spinoff premiered on Netflix in November and racked up a billion views in one month, making it only the third series on the streaming service to do so, according to The Guardian. The only two shows to rack up more views in that time are Stranger Things and Squid Game. But despite its success, the 20-year-old who embodies the character has been candid about her issues with the show, including the writing choices that led her to demand changes on set. Read on for her controversial opinions about the series.
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She doesn't watch the show.
lev radin / ShutterstockDuring her appearance on the podcast Armchair Expert, Ortega shared that Wednesday is "not typically the kind of TV that [she] would watch." She also pointed out, however, that she generally doesn't watch her own work.
Wednesday is different than her other projects, though. Not only will Ortega not watch, she also doesn't feel proud of the final product.
"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. "Wednesday, there was not a scene in that show that I went home and was like ‘OK, that should be fine.’”
She didn't always agree with the script.
NetflixOrtega explained that there were times when she had issues with the script and flat-out refused to say certain lines.
“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," she said. “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 a 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.'"
She even said that she "almost became unprofessional" on the set at times, because she started changing her character's lines to ones that she felt made sense for a character like Wednesday, who she says she "grew very, very protective of.”
"The script supervisor thought that I was like going with something and then I would have to sit down with the writers and they would be like, ‘Wait, what happened to this scene?'" the Scream VI star shared. "And I would have to go through and explain why I couldn’t do certain things.”
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She's not comfortable being known primarily for the show.
Michael Mattes / ShutterstockOrtega said on the podcast that when she took on the role of Wednesday she hadn't "really done a teen show like that before."
She continued, “You begin to feel a bit like a billboard, and there’s a part of me that almost feels like I’ve succumbed to this commercial version and kind of given up on my own personal interests."
With the show's popularity, she's had to think about what it means for herself personally and for her career, including whether she'll be typecast because of it. (Wednesday has already been renewed for Season 2.) “Now a lot of people know me from [Wednesday]," she explained. "It’s not my proudest moment internally, which I think also adds an extra level of insecurity and stress, because it’s like, now I’m finally getting these offers or these places that I want, but I don’t want to be known specifically for that."
Fans have praised her for influencing the show.
Kathy Hutchins / ShutterstockOrtega brought up the dress line in a previous interview. As reported by BuzzFeed News, during a Netflix Q&A in December she said, "I remember there’s a line where I’m talking about a dress and initially she was supposed to say, ‘Oh my god I’m freaking out over a dress, I literally hate myself.' And I was blown away because that sounded like… It was just a bunch of little things like that where I felt like we were able to avoid a lot of dialogue in an attempt to make her sound human."
As BuzzFeed reported, many fans of the show responded to a TikTok video of the Q&A saying that Ortega had saved the show by making sure the character stayed true to her cold and subtle nature rather than making her sound overly quirky.
