Jenna Ortega Walks Back Her Controversial ‘Wednesday’ Writers Room Comments

In an interview with Vanity Fair, the 21-year-old recalled filming Wednesday and how she tried to negotiate to be a producer on the Netflix series as she felt protective of her character.

“I’m aware of my position as an actor. I know that I’m not in charge … But I think with someone like Wednesday, who is in every scene, it only makes sense for that person to be that involved in what’s going on behind the scenes because she’s onscreen every second of the project,” she told the publication.

Her interview on Dax Shepard and Monica Padman’s popular “Armchair Expert” podcast in March 2023 went viral for how she explained just how protective she was of the dark and sarcastic teenager of The Addams Family.

She admitted that she became “almost unprofessional” at times while filming, during the notorious interview, as she explained changing lines without consulting the writers responsible for the script.

“Everything that she does, everything that I had to play, did not make sense for her character at all,” Ortega said on the podcast. “Her being in a love triangle? It made no sense,” she explained.

“There was a line about a dress she has to wear for a school dance and she says, ‘Oh my god I love it. Ugh, I can’t believe I said that. I literally hate myself,'” Ortega continued. “I had to go, ‘No.’ There were times on that set where I even became almost unprofessional in a sense where I just started changing lines.”

Now, as Ortega reflected on the impact her words had, especially coming around the time of the writers’ strike, she admitted she “could have used” her words better.

“I probably could have used my words better in describing all of that. I think, oftentimes, I’m such a rambler,” she told VF. “I think it was hard because I felt like had I represented the situation better, it probably would’ve been received better.”

The Wednesday comments were not the only controversial moment Ortega had to deal with over the past year.

In February, Ortega and Martin Freeman received backlash over their intimate scene in their film Miller’s Girl.

The storyline of the film — which debuted in theaters in January — follows Ortega, starring as 18-year-old student Cairo Sweet, who lusts after her married English professor, Jonathan Miller (Freeman).

Social media users who had seen the film at the time slammed the 31-year age gap of the actors — Freeman is 52-years-old — with some branding the X-rated scene as “gross” and “uncomfortable”.

“It’s not supposed to be a comfortable movie. It’s supposed to be awful at times,” Ortega told Vanity Fair now. “Art isn’t always meant to be pleasant or happy, and everyone skips off into the sunset at the end. We all have f–ked-up experiences at one point or another.”

The interview later moved on to discuss Ortega’s exit from the Scream franchise, which came after her costar Melissa Barrera was fired for her social media posts about the Israel-Hamas conflict.

In one Instagram Story post, per The Hollywood Reporter, the actress wrote that Gaza “is currently being treated like a concentration camp,” and described the war as “genocide and ethnic cleansing.”

“The business that we work in is so touchy-feely,” Ortega told Vanity Fair. “Everybody wants to be politically correct, but I feel like, in doing that, we lose a lot of our humanity and integrity, because it lacks honesty.”

“I wish that we had a better sense of conversation. Imagine if everyone could say what they felt and not be judged for it and, if anything, it sparked some sort of debate, not an argument.”

Read the full story, “Jenna Ortega Settles Into Fame Ahead of Wednesday Season 2 and a Beetlejuice Sequel,” by Michelle Ruiz in Vanity Fair’s September issue and on VanityFair.com