Part one of the second season of Netflix’s hit “The Addams Family” spinoff, “Wednesday,” is set to release on Aug. 1, but Jenna Ortega is discussing the complicated feelings she has as the lead.
In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, the actress, 23, spoke about the feelings of anxiety she felt after the show’s first season was released in November 2022. “Wednesday” is Netflix’s biggest English-language streaming series of all time, with 252.1 million views. Ortega was 18 when the show first started production.
“To be quite frank, after the show and trying to figure everything out, I was an unhappy person,” Ortega said. “After the pressure, the attention — as somebody who’s quite introverted, that was so intense and so scary.”
Ortega expressed that there is good and bad in portraying this iconic role. For the good parts, she expressed that Wednesday is more akin to her tastes as a young woman now than they were during her days on the Disney Channel show, “Stuck In The Middle.”
“I definitely feel like I have a bit more gothic taste than I did when I was a teenager,” said Ortega. “I’ve always been into dark things or been fascinated by them, but I was a Disney kid, and the whole thing is being bubbly and kind and overly sweet.”
But then there’s a drawback: typecasting. The actress gets a sense that the Wednesday role might limit what she can do in the future. “I’m doing a show I’m going to be doing for years where I play a schoolgirl,” said Ortega. “But I’m also a young woman.”
Ortega went on to express her frustrations with how women are viewed when they want to step outside the box and take on more challenging roles as opposed to men.
“But girls,” Ortega states, “if they don’t stay as this perfect image of how they were first introduced to you, then it’s ‘Ah, something’s wrong. She’s changed. She sold her soul.’ But you’re watching these women at the most pivotal times in their lives; they’re experimenting because that’s what you do.”
Despite all these feelings, Ortega expressed that she is extremely grateful for the show’s support. She also looks forward to roles that are “older and bolder and different.”
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Murjani Rawls may be reached at mrawls@njadvancemedia.com