Wednesday star Jenna Ortega is reflecting on some controversial comments she made in a March 2023 interview about changes she made to her character’s lines while on-set.
“I probably could have used my words better in describing all of that. I think, oftentimes, I’m such a rambler,” she tells Vanity Fair. “I think it was hard because I felt like had I represented the situation better, it probably would’ve been received better.
While making an appearance on the Armchair Expert With Dax Shepard in March 2023, Ortega opened up about what parts of the scripts she modified.
“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. “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.’”
“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.”
Ortega said she was “protective” of the character she was portraying and although she didn’t like some of the “emotional” arcs on the show, she knew it was necessary.
“Everything that I said felt so magnified…. It felt almost dystopian to me,” she told Vanity Fair of the controversy. “I felt like a caricature of myself…. 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.”
She said she even “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.”