Jenna Ortega Was Changing WEDNESDAY Scripts Without Telling the Writers Because They "Did Not Make Sense"
It seems like Jenna Ortega had such an insane experience working on the first season of Tim Burton’s Netflix series Wednesday. The show turned out amazing, but Ortega went through hell making it. We’ve already read stories of how she cried hysterically, couldn’t get sleep, and pulled her hair out over her grueling schedule.
She also previously talked about the multiple directors who worked on the show made her portrayal of Wednesday confusing and difficult saying that “everybody wanted different things from her.” She explained: “There have never been so many cooks in the kitchen. I was completely lost and confused. Typically I have no problem using my voice, but when you’re in it—I just remember feeling defeated after the first month.”
We are now learning from Ortega that during the show’s production, she was also changing the scripts without telling the writers because they made no sense to her from a character perspective. While speaking on the Armchair Expert podcast, she explained:
“When I read the entire series, I realized, ‘Oh, this is for younger audiences.’ When I first signed onto the show, I didn’t have all the scripts. I thought it was going to be a lot darker. It wasn’t… I didn’t know what the tone was, or what the score would sound like.”
She then went on to talk about some of the things that didn’t make sense for her character saying and why she started to change things up and admits to almost becoming unprofessional in the process:
“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.”
So, she played a huge role in shaping the wonderful version of the character that we saw in the series. She also wanted to make the character her own and wasn’t interested in playing a version of the character that lacked any kind of growth. Ortega went on to say:
“I grew very, very protective of her. You can’t lead a story and have no emotional arc because then it’s boring and nobody likes you. When you are little and say very morbid, offensive stuff, it’s funny and endearing. But then you become a teenager and it’s nasty and you know it. There’s less of an excuse.”
She previously explained: “I remember Tim did not want me to have any expression or emotion at all. He wanted a flat surface, which I understand. It’s funny and great except when you’re trying to move a plot along, and Wednesday is in every scene. There were a lot of battles like that because I felt like people didn’t always trust me when I was creating my path in terms of, ‘Okay, this is her arc. This is where she gets emotional.’”
Ortega went on quite an intense journey bringing the character of Wednesday to life, and all of her hard work and sacrifices paid off. That show is just so damn good!