In one series and a few films, Jenna Ortega has become one of the new faces of American cinema. Her role in Tim Burton’s new feature film, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”, places her a little more in a gothic and horrific universe that sticks to her skin.
“Wednesday” at the cinema. The phenomenon Jenna Ortega, who played Wednesday Addams in the Netflix series, which became a hit on the platform, is hitting theaters. In Beetlejuice Beetlejuiceby Tim Burton, which comes out Wednesday September 11, the American actress is Astrid Deetz, daughter of Lydia, played by Winona Ryder, the child from the first part, released in 1988, who communicated with ghosts. This film, a real success in the United States, established Jenna Ortega, 21, as one of the essential figures of the new generation of stars in Hollywood. From her beginnings at Disney to her status as a “scream queen” and her roles as a gothic muse with Tim Burton, franceinfo introduces her.
She is one of Disney’s child stars.
Jenna Ortega started her career early. She shot her first commercials at age 6, thanks to a video posted on Facebook by her family and forwarded to a casting director. The actress of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent remembers the long car rides, “privileged moments of exchange with his mother”, she tells Madame Figaro, between Coachella (California), where she lived, and Los Angeles, to reach the sets.
She also remembers her difficulty in finding roles. “As a child actor, there are two jobs you can do: You either play the younger version of someone or you play someone’s daughter – and there weren’t a lot of top Hispanic actors I could play that role for.”, she observes in the magazine The Hollywood Reporter.
At 11, she discovered the Marvel universe in Iron Man 3. Seven seconds on screen, during which she plays “the daughter of the vice president of the United States, a one-legged disabled woman in a wheelchair,” she details in Madame Figaro. She then landed the lead role in the Disney Channel sitcom, Harley the least of my worriesthus keeping the promise made to his family: “I remember crying at the dinner table one night and saying, ‘I know I can do this. If you let me do this, I swear I’ll end up on the Disney Channel.'”she traces back to New York Times.
She also lends her voice to Princess Elena in the cartoon. Elena of Avalor from 2016. While promoting the animated series at Disney World in Orlando, she is “almost moved to tears”she details in the daily newspaper. Accompanied by her mother, she sees in the park “girls of all ages and colors dressed in [la tenue d’Elena]“. “It was such a glorious moment because that was all I wanted growing up, someone I could relate to.”
She exploded in a Netflix series
After Disney, she continued her rise at Netflix with a role in season 2 of the series You (2019) and the movie Yes Day (2021). But it’s mostly the series Wednesdayderived from the film The Addams Family (1991) by director Barry Sonnenfeld, which brought her to the attention of the general public. Jenna Ortega takes on the role of Wednesday Addams, played by Christina Ricci in the feature film, which lands in the Nevermore Academya school for marginalized and empowered students.
Airing in November 2022, the series becomes the third most-watched English-language television title in Netflix’s history, reports the American magazine. Varietywith over 752.5 hours of viewing in less than two weeks. His dance, in one of the episodes, on the title Goo Goo Muck by the American rock band The Cramps has gone viral on social media. The sequence, isolated by Netflix, has generated nearly 10 million views on its own.
Yet the story could have been very different. She wasn’t sure she wanted the role, but “the spontaneity of the call [de Tim Burton] made me want it”she admits in Vanity FairThe director only needed five minutes to be convinced, he told the magazine. “It was probably one of the most difficult roles to cast, because it requires a depth that can’t be faked. Unless you have that inner life, a certain clarity and strength, there’s no way around it.”describes the director of Beetlejuice and of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Aged 18 when she began filming in Romania, Jenna Ortega became popular overnight. “For a long time, I was frightened and destabilized by everything that happened”she admits. But she also grew up with Mercredi. “She definitely taught me to be much more confident, much more stubborn.”she relates in the New York Times.
She has attracted the wrath of producers and screenwriters
Wednesday also earned her her first criticism. In March 2023, in the podcast “Armchair Expert” by Dax Shepard and Monica Padman, the actress confessed to having been “almost unprofessional” on the filming of the first season, notably changing certain lines, being hesitant about costumes or situations. “TEverything I had to play made no sense to [mon] character. The fact that she ended up in a love triangle made no sense”she deplores. A behavior that gave rise to tensions on the set with the writers, while the latter were going to start their long strike, in May 2023, to demand better working conditions.
“Jenna Ortega better be back from New York for her picket duty.”wrote on the social network X Nick Adams, a screenwriter for the animated television series BoJack Horseman. “Rewriting is writing! See you on the picket line, Jenna.”responded on the same network Karen Joseph Adcock, screenwriter of the acclaimed series The Bear. Producer Steven DeKnight (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Daredevil) even called the actress’s comments “pretentious and self-important”before apologizing, on the X network.
An episode that the actress regrets. “I probably could have used my words better to describe all of this”she concedes to Vanity Fair. Consequence for season 2 of Wednesday, currently filming in Dublin: she became a producer, because she didn’t “wanted[t] not [se] deceive” and have an eye on the script, she says in Variety. “We decided to go more horror. We’re dropping all the love stories, which is really cool. We’re going to go edgier, darker.”
She is one of the new “scream queens”
Since her roles at Disney, Jenna Ortega has come a long way. Now a star thanks to Tim Burton’s gothic and macabre universe, she has also become one of the new “scream queens” that monsters enjoy terrorizing on screen. In 2022, she was one of the headliners of Scream Vby Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, a new version of Wes Craven’s horror film (1996), and X by Ti West. The following year, she toured Scream VI.
A genre that sticks to her skin, but that she can’t help but appreciate. “It must be because of my face, people love to see me scream”she confided on the set of Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show”. II don’t know what it’s like to have blood thrown on your face and run around screaming bloody murder. But it’s really therapeutic, really fun. Everybody who works on horror sets loves horror.”
She refuses, however, to be considered the Winona Ryder of Generation Z. The actress, who plays her mother in Beetlejuice Beetlejuicewas one of the faces of the gothic and fantastic style in cinema. “I would never give myself that credit”assures Jenna Ortega in Vanity FairShe has, however, become a role model for the younger generation, but rejects this role: “What I think is important is that everyone finds their own way. Be weird – or not… but be yourself!” she throws in Madame Figaro.
She closed her Twitter account (but is one of the stars of Instagram)
Growing up after being a child star can be tough. Jenna Ortega, on the other hand, doesn’t want to change a thing. “There are times when I regret it, and times when my parents regret it. Looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing.”she delivers to the New York Times. But the American actress also discovered, very early on, the dark sides of this profession and the media exposure it brings. She was confronted with malicious acts on social networks. “The first private message I opened at age 12 was an unsolicited photo of a man’s genitals. And that was just the beginning of what was to come.”, she tells the American daily. She has also experienced the excesses of artificial intelligence first-hand.
“Did I enjoy being 14, creating a Twitter account, and seeing inappropriate and edited content of me as a child? No. It’s terrifying.”
Jenna Ortega, actressto the “New York Times”
The increase in explicit content she saw led her to delete her account on the X network. “It was sickening and it made me feel bad. (…) I couldn’t post anything without getting things like that.” Although she no longer has an account on Elon Musk’s network, she is, however, a star on Instagram, where she has more than 38 million subscribers.