With Wednesday season 3 underway, Jenna Ortega has opened up about the struggles she faced when the first chapter was in production. And that included concerns she wasn’t “clicking” with director Tim Burton. Right now, Ortega is gearing up for the release of Taika Waititi’s new sci-fi Klara and the Sun. The star appeared on the Happy Sad Confused podcast to talk about the film, but she also opened up about the Netflix series. Ortega is now synonymous with Wednesday Addams, with the show catapulting her to global fame after premiering in 2022. Two seasons have been and gone, while filming for season 3 wrapped up last month. But despite its phenomenal success, Ortega admitted she wasn’t always convinced it was going to work. Credit: Netflix “I didn’t think that it was working at all. And that was me being in my own head perhaps,” she explained. But she also said she’d never worked with someone like Tim Burton, the Netflix show’s director and executive producer. “Tim is very, very shy. He’s opened up a bunch. But when you initially start working with him, he does not speak,” she continued. “We were doing hair and makeup tests and they would try different bangs or try different lengths of braids and he would call Colleen Atwood [Burton’s regular costume designer] over and he would whisper in Colleen’s ear, and Colleen would come over and speak for him. “Now knowing him, I think that was just him maybe being sensitive as to ‘well she’s a young girl, I don’t want her to feel like I’m picking her apart’.” But those were the kinds of things that left Ortega feeling, “Okay, well, I’m not clicking with him. He’s not speaking to me.” Of course, now they know each other, it’s a lot more comfortable. And Ortega pointed out, “He was just trying to give me space as a performer to figure it out myself. “But to be 17, 18 in a foreign country with this very big director and feel like I wasn’t connecting, I was very stressed out.” Ortega also reflected on the success of the show, saying she “couldn’t believe it”. Especially after her reaction to seeing it for the first time. “They had sent me an episode or two to watch out of courtesy before the show came out and I couldn’t make it through the first five minutes, 10 minutes,” she continued, adding that she doesn’t like to watch herself anyway, which could have had an impact too. As said, this has all changed since then. Ortega described there being “immense comfort” when it came to filming season 3. “It’s nice to see everyone kind of at their peak, most comfortable iteration of their characters,” she explained. The star was also happy to work with Winona Ryder again after they starred in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice together. Ryder has joined Wednesday season 3 in the role of a mysterious new character named Tabitha. Despite her love for Wednesday, Ortega also revealed that she’s keen to take a break from TV for a while. “I think after Wednesday I’ll probably be off the TV for a while,” she explained. “I had many years doing that. I was bouncing from show to show as a kid just to this, and I want to leave time for new things.” For all the latest film and TV updates and hot takes, like our Facebook page. Featured image credit: Netflix/Harald Krichel/Creative Commons Post navigation Next story
