WEDNESDAY Creators Talk About Jenna Ortega's Controversial Writer Comments
As you know, Wednesday star Jenna Ortega made some comments about the writing on the first season of Wednesday and how she started changing lines in the script without telling the writers. Things that she felt didn’t really work.
Well, the show’s creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, were recently asked about those comments she made and they shared their thoughts. As you might imagine, they’ve been in the business for a long time, so they handled it all very professionally.
While talking to THR, Gough said: "That's hard. We've done a few of these shows, like Smallville, which was a big hit out of the gate. Suddenly, you have these young stars in the spotlight. They're going to misstep. They're going to say things.
“I think you just have to give them grace and know that it happens. It's never pleasant, but it just comes with the territory. I think we're at the point now where the internet's going to do what the internet's going to do. What you don't want to do is give these things oxygen."
Gough and Millar have continued to enjoy their time working with Ortega. They recently worked with her on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice as well as a Wednesday Season 2.
In response to Gough's comment about their past experiences, Millar went on to say that they appreciate Ortega’s immense talent.
Miller said: "We work with Jenna very closely on the show. We obviously worked with her on [Beetlejuice Beetlejuice]. It's always an incredibly collaborative and joyful experience.
“We couldn't be prouder of her work and we've embraced her as a producer on the show this year. She is one of the hardest working, most talented young actresses in the business, and we are very lucky and feel very proud that she's working with us."
Miller concluded: "So it is what it is. A show of this size and this scale is always going to have people chattering. But it's not our reality or her reality."
So in the end, it seems like everything was blown out of proportion and everything is fine between the creative team and Ortega.
Jenna Ortega previously reflected on her comments about changing her character’s lines on Netflix’s Wednesday, saying: “I probably could have used my words better in describing all of that. I think, oftentimes, I’m such a rambler. I think it was hard because I felt like had I represented the situation better, it probably would’ve been received better.”
A lot of Hollywood writers took to social media calling out Ortega for being “toxic” and “beyond entitled,” and on the picket lines, some Writers Guild of America members carried signs with slogans such as “Without writers, Jenna Ortega will have nothing to punch up!”
Ortega went on to say: “Everything that I said felt so magnified … It felt almost dystopian to me,” Ortega, who is now 21 years old, told Vanity Fair. “I felt like a caricature of myself.”
She went on to share the lesson she learned from that experience, saying: “You’re never going to please everybody, and as someone who naturally was a people pleaser, that was really hard for me to understand. Some people just may not like you … and that’s entirely fine.”
Ortega also said that even she got “sick of myself last year,” adding: “My face was everywhere … so it’s like, fair enough, if I were opening my phone and I saw the same girl with some stupid quote or something, I would be over it too.”
Wednesday executive producer and director Tim Burton talked about working with Ortega saying she’s “very direct. She’s very no-nonsense, and I find that very refreshing and beautiful and artistic.”
He even said that Ortega “could direct [the series] if she wanted to. I saw, from day one, she’s very aware. She’s more aware, sometimes, than I am.”
Wednesday Season 2 is expected to arrive on Netflix sometime in 2025.