Jenna Ortega Talks About Seeing Michael Keaton as Betelgeuse For the First Time "I Remember Feeling My Soul Leave My Body"

The sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is right around the corner now, and one of the franchise’s new stars, Jenna Ortega, had the surreal experience of walking onto the set of a film she grew up watching and coming face to face with Betelgeuse himself.

Ortega talked about the film and her role in a sit down with Vanity Fair, where she described her first time seeing Michael Keaton in full costume.

“Every time I walked onto that set, I wanted to remember it for the rest of my life,” Ortega says. She describes one wild church scene with theater-kid vigor.

“You have Willem Dafoe in a trench coat, sliding down in a back pew, just watching everyone,” she says, while Winona Ryder stood by with her pointy bangs of yore. Then Keaton materialized.

“I remember feeling my soul leave my body for a second,” Ortega says of her first encounter with the Betelgeuse in his crusty ghoul regalia. “And then in between takes, he’s sitting down and drinking his tea.”

In another interview I saw, Ortega talked about the fact that they were able to make Keaton’s makeup so close to the original film. This threw her for a loop, as it was a character she’d seen since childhood, and it was shocking when he was suddenly standing in front of her.

Ortega also divulged to VF that she developed a close bond with her onscreen mom, returning star Winona Ryder, who was kind of the original onscreen teen goth. Ryder, now 52, was only 15 when she appeared in Beetlejuice.

“I think she naturally is very protective of other women,” Ortega says, and the elder conferred some wisdom and experience on the younger, though Ortega won’t go into specifics. Ryder added to the conversation, saying, “That kind of trust, the kind I have with her, it’s once-in-a-lifetime rare.”

It sounds like it was a blast to make the movie, and I am looking forward to watching it! Beetlejuice Beetlejuice hits theaters on September 6, 2024.