Jenna Ortega Reveals the "Unprofessional" Changes She Made to 'Wednesday'
“I grew very, very protective of her,” says the actor.
Fans quickly became obsessed with Jenna Ortega‘s unique portrayal of Wednesday Addams in the Netflix series Wednesday. It turns out, Ortega made a few changes to the character, which helped make her as iconic as she is.
Ortega was persistent on Wednesday staying true to herself, which sometimes meant disagreeing with writers. “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 because it’s so easy to fall into that category, especially with this type of show,” Ortega said on a recent episode of Dax Shepard’s podcast, Armchair Expert. “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 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.’”
She continued, “There were times on that set where I even became unprofessional in a sense where I just started changing lines. 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. I grew very, very protective of her.”
Ortega also revealed that the viral dance scene was originally supposed to be a flash mob. However, she didn’t think it would be very Wednesday of her to do that.
Ortega added, “She was supposed to start dancing and everyone was supposed to pick up on it and start dancing with her. And that, I vetoed because why would she be OK with that? I said, ‘Either cut it or have Wednesday knock someone out and then it’s done.’ Sleeper hold, muffled scream from the side and then that’s the end of that.”
For more, check out the podcast episode below.
