Who Is Jenna Ortega?

Who Is Jenna Ortega?

Wednesday Addams had to dance.

No one was sure what that would look like. Even Jenna Ortega, the young actor playing Wednesday, wasn’t completely sure.

It was 2022, and Jenna was in Romania. She was filming the first season of Wednesday, a show about Wednesday Addams, a character from the classic TV show The Addams Family, and her adventures at Nevermore Academy, a school for teens with special powers. That day, they were shooting an important scene of Wednesday dancing in the center of a crowded school event. Wednesday was supposed to be a serious person who didn’t enjoy having fun like other teens. This scene would show what it looked like when she went wild.

The script had originally called for Wednesday to lead a flash mob—a group of other students at the dance. But Jenna thought Wednesday would want to dance by herself. Tim Burton, the director of the show, asked Jenna if she wanted a choreographer to help create the dance. Jenna decided to come up with something on her own.

Two days before they planned to film the scene, Tim asked Jenna if she had her dance scene ready. Jenna assured him she did . . . but she didn’t! She spent the next few days watching videos of 1980s goth bands and club kids to get ideas. She even found a scene from the original Addams family TV series where the character of young Wednesday dances, and Jenna studied her moves.

As planned, the 1981 song “Goo Goo Muck” by the Cramps began to play. Jenna started her dance. She mixed in big flailing arm movements with small quieter moves. Some of it came from what she had learned from watching the videos. Other parts she made up as she went along. And she did it all with the direct, unblinking stare she had perfected for the role
of Wednesday.

Jenna hadn’t been feeling well. When she reported to set earlier that day, she had taken a COVID-19 test. The production was following COVID safety rules, like taking COVID tests each day and wearing masks off camera. After they had been filming for a while, news came that Jenna had tested positive. Filming was shut down, and Jenna was sent back to her apartment. She quarantined (stayed away from other people) for the next ten days until she was completely well.

Jenna was worried about the dance scene. Because she had felt sick, she wasn’t sure if her performance was good enough. But there wasn’t time to film it again.

Jenna had nothing to worry about. When Wednesday premiered in November 2022, it quickly became one of Netflix’s biggest hits. And everyone loved her dance. People all over the world posted videos on social media of themselves imitating her moves.

For Jenna, Wednesday was life-changing. She suddenly went from an actor who had been working steadily for more than ten years to the star of one of the most popular shows in the world. It was all she could have imagined when she was a little girl in the California desert who desperately wanted to act. And maybe more than she wanted.