Jenna Ortega Says WEDNESDAY Season 2 Will Lean Into Horror and Ditch a Romantic Love Interest
Jenna Ortega will be back to play Wednesday Addams in Netflix’s Wednesday Season 2 and this time around, she will also be a producer on the project, so she actually has some ownership over the series and where the story goes.
She recently offered some insight into the priorities that she has for the next chapter of the story, and as the story continues, it’s going to lean into the horror of the story. She explains:
“We’ve decided we want to lean into the horror aspect of the show a little bit more. Because it is so lighthearted, and a show like this with vampires and werewolves and superpowers, you don’t want to take yourself too seriously.”
I love that they are going to play with the horror aspect of the story more, that is a direction that I 100% agree with! She went on to say that they are also ditching any romantic love interest for the character, which makes complete sense for Wednesday. Ortega went on to say, “We’re ditching any romantic love interest for Wednesday, which is really great.”
In Season 1 we saw Wednesday in a bit of a love triangle between Tyler Galpin (Hunter Doohan) and Xavier Thorpe (Percy Hynes White). Ortega previously commented that this part of the story “made no sense” for her character.
As for moving into a producer spot for the first time, Ortega explains that the move was a “natural progression” from the workplace environment on Season 1. She said:
“We had already been throwing out so many ideas, and I’m somebody who’s very hands on. I want to know what’s going on, and with a character like Wednesday, who is so beloved and such a legend, I just really didn’t want to get her wrong. So I try to have as many conversations as possible. On set, with the writers and Tim [Burton], we all would get together and decide, ‘Okay, what works and what doesn’t?’ It was naturally already very collaborative.”
“So in preparation for a second season, we wanted to get ahead of the curve and make sure that we could start the conversations earlier, and I’m just so curious. I want to see the outfits, new characters that are coming in, scripts, and they were gracious enough to let me put the producer hat on.”
Ortega got heat for some of the things she was saying about the creative team on the show. One of the wildest admissions she made was when she said she started changing lines in the script without telling the writers. She even said herself that it bordered on unprofessional behavior. She said:
“I don’t think I’ve ever had to put my foot down more on a set in a way that I had to on Wednesday. Everything that Wednesday does, everything I had to play, did not make sense for her character at all. Her being in a love triangle? It made no sense. 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.’ 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. The script supervisor thought I was going with something and then I had to sit down with the writers, and they’d be like, ‘Wait, what happened to the scene?’ And I’d have to go and explain why I couldn’t go do certain things.”
Well, now that she’s a producer, maybe the development and production aspects will move more smoothly for everyone. Better to have Ortega tell the creative team what she doesn’t like before they start shooting.
Source: Variety