How Jenna Ortega Became Wednesday Addams

You're gonna see sides of her in this series

that you've never seen before

or may not seem authentic to her

and having her go through the typical teenage experience

in trying to avoid making her every other human

was immensely important to me.

And I hope that that that care translates.

Hi, my name is Jen Ortega

and this is how I became Wednesday Adams.

[upbeat music]

I first heard about the role of Wednesday

shooting a horror film with A24 called X

and I got an email one day that Tim Burton

and wanted to meet with me for the role of Wednesday Adams.

I was pretty taken aback,

I didn't know if he had any familiarity with who I was

but then also Wednesday,

I actually was compared to my entire life.

So it was just kind of a weird circumstance.

I kind of felt like I was being pranked or something.

I was always compared to Wednesday

because I'm very dry

and I don't think people can tell when I'm being serious

or when I'm being sarcastic.

And I didn't think it was that bad until we were on set,

sometimes and Tim might say, Oh, that was dark.

[upbeat music]

When I first got offered the role

I did not even consider fan base.

I didn't consider it until we were shooting

or when I started having conversations with Netflix

and they were talking about things like

ComicCon and Funko Pops.

I think that's when it really started to settle in.

The internal panic that I faced,

the pressure of,

oh people live for this character.

People tattoo this character on their bodies.

She's been a consistent Halloween costume for years.

I still panic about her.

I still lay awake at night staring up the ceiling thinking,

I should have done this.

And it's been done so flawlessly in the past.

And that wasn't a trait of Wednesday,

that's something that Christina started.

It is scary.

It's a lot of pressure and you,

you want to do justice to someone like her

and there's a lot of anticipation and and expectation

and what an incredible job.

And I think that I had to go to work every day

and remember, it's a Netflix show, you know.

My mom is am ER nurse, she saves lives.

I want to make people feel good

and I wanna give them that break.

And that's all it is.

Christina didn't join the shoot 'til towards the end.

I was a really big admirer of her work.

The strange thing is

we never talked about her being Wednesday once.

I think maybe one time on the last week of shooting

I made a reference to her Wednesday.

But I think that we both were able to appreciate the fact

that they were gonna be different.

I didn't wanna knock her off

and I didn't wanna be doing some impression of her.

And I think it was really important that we just kept our,

our ideas separate.

Physicality wise I,

it's funny I think my posture has improved immensely

since working on that job.

'Cause I always made sure I had a straight back.

I didn't move my hands or arms much if I didn't have to.

At some point during the first couple weeks of shooting,

I did a take where I did not blink at all.

And Tim said, I don't want you to blink anymore.

So that's another thing too

where it's just weird mannerisms.

We try to incorporate things like that.

The thing about the blinking is,

I didn't realize that I was doing it.

It just kind of happened

because every time we started to take,

I would reset my face.

I would drop all the muscles in my face

and to really like the Kubrick stare

where I stared through my eyebrows.

It's just a bit intimidating.

I think something like that is not blinking.

Clearly it struck something with him

and I trust his opinion so much because he's, Tim Burton.

It's funny watching him work.

When he genuinely appreciates something,

he gets excited like a kid.

And I also didn't wanna seem

like I was doing too much with my voice

but I think that there is something

about her that is formal.

I mean, she's so intelligent.

She has incredible vocabulary.

I'm stubborn, single minded and obsessive.

But those are all traits of great writers

and serial killers.

I kind of altered my pitch a little bit,

I think at times and also

the way that I pronounce certain words.

I know that they wanted to bring some sort,

of realistic aspect to her

and make her more of a human being.

So I tried and maybe in more dramatic scenes

or more intense scenes to kind of drop it a little bit.

Attempted murder charges.

How would that have looked on your record?

Terrible.

Everyone would know I failed to get the job done.

[upbeat music]

A normal day on the set of Wednesday.

I would wake up around 4:30,

I would be picked up around 5:20-ish.

So I get dressed, then I go to hair and makeup.

And then after I pretty much go straight to set

and I start blocking.

And then we start shooting, immediately after.

And we would do 12 hour days.

We would have rolling lunches.

So we just eat when we could.

After shooting, I might have a couple of lessons,

I might go to stunt rehearsal to learn the fight sequence

that we have going on for the next day.

So I'd do that for an hour

and then I might have a cello lesson and then I'd go home.

That was my day, that was my life

for eight months in Romania.

The first time I went on set,

I had a walkthrough with Tim

and the first set that I saw was the dorm room,

Enid and Wednesday's dorm room and it was wonderful.

They had just put up the stained glass.

But I remember also being a bit nervous or a bit,

okay this is gonna be my environment,

kind of feeling it out.

And it was helpful cause I was just getting to know

the beautiful, wonderful Emma Myers

for the first time who plays Enid.

The dynamic between Wednesday and Enid

is one of my favorite dynamics in TV.

You know, it's dark storm cloud and sunshine.

It's always so fun to play off of one another.

And it's very rare that I meet someone

and feel instantly connected or comfortable with them

and Emma has always been that person

and I think anyone would with her.

She's that kind and genuine of a person.

And another one of my favorite people on this planet.

First season of a show, we did kind of just jump into it.

There was a lot of different things we were doing.

Archery, fencing, canoeing, cello.

When you do a television series,

I feel like first season

you're still discovering the character in yourself

because we've never seen Wednesday as a teenage girl.

She's always been eight, 10 year old.

And you know, when young children say really dark things,

so genuinely it's very sweet and charming in a sense where,

you know, as soon as someone gets older

and they become teenager, it's kind of nasty.

It's a weird game to play,

especially when all anybody wants to see

is Wednesday be rude.

That's the kind of the charming thing about her.

She says what everybody wishes they could say.

When I look at you, the following emojis come to mind.

Rope, shovel, hole.

There's something that I tried to play to

at certain beats of the show where

if she did have disagreements with someone

or something she did do to somebody else was inconsiderate,

it was never coming from malicious intent

but just genuine misunderstanding.

Bringing that layer of innocence back

or genuine appreciation for all things a bit more gothic.

But we've never spent this much time with Wednesday.

She's always been the one liner.

She's always been the one off.

And you're gonna see sides of her in this series

that you've never seen before

or may not seem authentic to her.

And having her go through the typical teenage experience

and trying to avoid making her every other human

was immensely important to me.

And I hope that that that care translates.

I do remember though, in the second episode,

I'm playing with this telescope

and I'm seeing something in the water.

And when I was doing it,

I kind of did the I eyebrow ways

and we were playing with it a bit.

And I told Tim, I said, I feel like a silent film actor.

Which I've always wanted to do silent film.

And it was really exciting for me

because I felt like that that really encouraged

mannerisms or kind of balance the aspects

of surrealism and realism in the film.

And that's something I think

that he really appreciated as well.

So we kept saying, Oh, it's like a silent movie.

It's like a silent movie.

And I think tackling something like that in that way

because they can be very theatrical and dramatic

and intense and that is what the Adam's family is.

But it is a hard thing to play with,

an expressionless character

and also to have an emotional arc as a character

and push a series forward.

I think something that we tried to do

when we were shooting though

is with every take, we try different versions.

We'd do the flat version,

we'd do a version with vocal inflection,

a version with expression,

so much trial and error all on camera too.

I appreciated Tim too because if I told him,

I said, Hey, be straight with me, is this awful?

And he would tell me yes or no.

By the way, he never called me awful.

He's too sweet.

You work with someone like Tim

it's like he doesn't even know his own name.

Someone with a name like his

could very easily use it as an excuse

to treat people poorly.

And I never got that from him once.

[upbeat music]

In creating a new Wednesday with Tim Burton,

I know that he wanted to establish a different look,

it was really important to him

that there was something different with the hair

because you know, her iconic braids.

But he wanted there to be a very clear distinction

that this was a different girl.

And I remember we had hair and makeup test

at his place in London

and we tried silver streaks in my hair.

Short, tiny braids, really long, thick braids.

We just tried all different variations

and at some point the hairdresser

that we were working with Paul,

he brought out a clip of fringe.

There was something a about it that Tim really enjoyed

but something about it that was a bit off.

So I told the hairdresser, I said,

Hey, maybe just cut my actual hair.

He said, Are you sure?

And I said, Hey, if we have time to grow it out

we have time to grow it out,

Whatever, let's just see.

And then he loved it.

And that was something that we married and we stuck to

and I remember him being very peculiar

and specific about the look.

You look a little, pale.

Please excuse Wednesday, she's allergic to color.

I think a big part of Wednesday's color,

some of it does play in filter.

There was a little bit of makeup

but I spent so much time in Romania and it was winter

that it got to a point where they used to put makeup

on my hands and things like that and they just stopped.

I would ask the makeup artist like,

Hey you don't think I need more?

And she said,

No, it's kind of almost matching your skin tone now.

I lost all melanin. [laughing]

[upbeat music]

Something that I learned from Wednesday is,

I think it's always important to play

whoever's shoes you're stepping into, just a real person.

Just a real person.

Because it's very easy to be caught up in a show like this

and especially someone who has no emotion

to be scared to show emotion

or scared to do something that's untrue to character.

But ultimately you've gotta be true to yourself

and kind of trust yourself in that process.

And it's just really about trusting your own gut

and marrying whatever it is that you stick to

and makes it so much easier to let go at your job

and explore and have a good time with it.

[upbeat music continues]