Jenna Ortega Clarifies Her ‘Wednesday’ Season 1 Writing Comments

There was some backlash towards Jenna Ortega during the WGA strikes last year following her comments on the Wednesday scripts. At the time, the young actor remarked that she punched up dialogue for her character without talking to the writers, and it was met with anger from writers and creatives online.

Now, the star of the upcoming movie Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice is sharing her thoughts on how she could have handled that situation differently. While talking with Vanity Fair, Ortega opened up about the situation and what she said on the Armchair Expert podcast at the time. Ortega detailed her process as an actor and how she felt some of the scenes and situations didn’t fit with Wednesday Addams as a character.

The situation was made much worse due to the rising tension of the WGA strike and how Ortega described her interactions with the writers. It led to picket signs about how Ortega needed writers to “punch up” their work and other digs at the actor. In her interview, she opened up about how she could have worded that situation better. “I probably could have used my words better in describing all of that. I think, oftentimes, I’m such a rambler,” she told Vanity Fair.“I think it was hard because I felt like had I represented the situation better, it probably would’ve been received better.”

She went on to talk about how quickly she learned how her words could be turned against her. “Everything that I said felt so magnified … It felt almost dystopian to me,” she said. “I felt like a caricature of myself.”

A lesson learned

Part of the interview that is quite telling is when Ortega talks about what she learned from the situation. Essentially, what happened was that she didn’t agree with something in a script and worked through it on her own. She is now an executive producer on the show, meaning she can give her notes on the series. What people read into her quotes was not necessarily what Ortega meant, especially given how she reacted to it while talking with Vanity Fair.

“You’re never going to please everybody, and as someone who naturally was a people pleaser, that was really hard for me to understand,” she said. “Some people just may not like you … and that’s entirely fine.” Ortega went on to say that she understood if people thought she was everywhere. “I got sick of myself last year. 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.”

But when Michelle Ruiz, who did the profile for Vanity Fair, pointed out that women are told to “advocate” for themselves and then ridiculed and crucified when they do, Ortega made another great point. “I feel like we definitely need to practice what we preach a little bit more,” she said. “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.”

The interview clearly shows that Ortega didn’t mean to shame the writers but instead was trying to share her truth about a character. That is something that should be a collaborative process and I am glad she has more say in season 2 of the series!