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‘Wednesday’ star Jenna Ortega’s rude comments should kill her career — but they won’t

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
c4IDLZ4.jpg
What makes Jenna Ortega think she can publicly trash her employer and get away with it?

Everybody and everything — that’s what.

Such is the punishment-free, cowering-in-terror, you-do-you, be-well world we live in.

The 20-year-old star of Netflix’s massive hit “Wednesday” — already a national treasure in her own mind — recently said on Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast that her behavior at work was “unprofessional.”

But Ortega wasn’t on a teary-eyed apology tour atoning for her sins. No, she was extolling her rotten behavior as a virtue.

On the podcast, the actress — who’s also in “Scream VI” — discussed how, like an authoritarian dictator, she was a self-appointed script doctor on “Wednesday” and that she deserves the utmost thanks from the actual paid, unionized writers for bettering their thoughtless schlock.

“There were times on that set where I even became almost unprofessional in a sense where I just started changing lines,” Ortega said, proudly citing the sort of actions that would get anybody else in any other profession fired.

Jenna Ortega said on Dax Shepard's podcast Armchair Expert that her behavior on the set of Wednesday was unprofessional.
Jenna Ortega said on Dax Shepard’s podcast, “Armchair Expert,” that her behavior on the set of “Wednesday” was “unprofessional.”REUTERS

“The script supervisor thought I was going with something and then I had to sit down with the writers, and they’d be like, ‘Wait, what happened to the scene?’ And I’d have to go and explain why I couldn’t go do certain things.”

Some of those things: “[Wednesday] being in a love triangle? It made no sense. There was a line about a dress she has to wear for a school dance and she says, ‘Oh, my God, I love it. Ugh — I can’t believe I said that. I literally hate myself.’ I had to go, ‘No.’”

Jenna, you’re in a mediocre spin-off of “The Addams Family” that’s best known for a flailing-arms dance on TikTok. Nothing about it makes sense.

When the writers are saying to you, “Wait, what happened to the scene?,” you have crossed an obvious line and are no longer doing your job.

Ortega's character Wednesday's dance became a social media sensation.
Ortega’s character Wednesday’s dance became a social media sensation.©Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection

Ortega’s egotistical nonsense is a throwback to Katherine Heigl’s petulance in the early days of “Grey’s Anatomy.”

The then-29-year-old starlet was already known for being difficult when, in 2008, she very publicly took herself out of Emmy Awards contention.

“I did not feel that I was given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination … In addition, I did not want to potentially take away an opportunity from an actress who was given such materials,” she told the LA Times.

A k a I’m amazing, everybody else around me sucks.

Heigl decided to leave the show in 2010, and her career has, rightfully, been on the fritz ever since.

In 2015 she played a character named Mona Champagne in the film “Home Sweet Hell” that I’ve just learned exists. And who could forget the more recent “The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature,” or “Firefly Lane”? (Answer: just about everyone.)

All-powerful “Grey’s” creator Shonda Rhimes shed no tears.

While doing press for her hit “Scandal” four years later, Rhimes told the Hollywood Reporter, “There are no Heigls in this situation,” adding, “I don’t put up with bulls – – t or nasty people. I don’t have time for it.”

Bravo to Shonda for not suffering any fools or divas, but many in the industry seem only too happy to put up with Ortega.

Katherine Heigl was known for being difficult on the set of Grey's Anatomy. Katherine Heigl was known for being difficult on the set of “Grey’s Anatomy.”ABC

She’s still on the rise, with at least four movies in the works.

Insanely, the actress has been made an executive producer on the second season of “Wednesday.”

It’s like if your boss discovered you sitting in her office chair shouting orders at your peers and said, “You’re absolutely right. You’re in charge now!”

Steven DeKnight, a producer whose credits include “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and who isn’t working on “Wednesday,” did, however, have the guts to call out Ortega — sort of.

On Twitter, he declared her comments “entitled” and “toxic,” but then had to walk it back after an outcry from fans.

Ortega is “fantastic” and the whole uproar is a “learning experience for everyone” DeKnight later tweeted as a mea culpa.

Diva behavior isn’t new in Hollywood, or Broadway, or opera, but it used to amount to the artistically rooted outbursts of supernaturally talented people who’d been in the business for decades.

Singer Maria Callas’ temper was legendary. “Network” star Faye Dunaway was angrily hurling objects at crew members of the play “Tea at Five” as little as four years ago (she got canned). Patti LuPone would go off at cellphones, lack-of-masks and Andrew Lloyd Webber with the ferocity of Evita.

But to publicly proclaim that your co-workers stink is tantamount to treason — especially when said co-workers are responsible for the breakout role that saved you from video game voice overs.

Ortega should be criticized for her ungrateful comments — instead she’s being celebrated.

That’s how we do things in consequences-free, lunatics-running-the-asylum 2023.
 

TheInfamousKira

Reseterror Resettler
This article sounds like it was written by a seething jealous (for some fucking reason) person. Like...how does the author think people network and acquire/market/use their skills? I suppose Trent Reznor could have stayed in his lane as a janitor at a medium sized record label, but he didn't, and because of that the hit movie about Facebook now has cool music. I mean, think about that. One decision can change your trajectory and make you brush shoulders with all kinds of unexpected people. Life, man.
 

kunonabi

Member
Her fixing the nonsense that a couple of hack writers crapped out isn't a big deal. Her racism and selfishness on X are another matter. I was actually a fan until all that and honestly her Wednesday performance is pretty overrated.
 

Madflavor

Member
She's hot in Hollywood right now, and talented to boot. This won't kill her career, nor it shouldn't. If she legitimately made the script better, and the right people know she made the script better, then there's no problem.

Now if there's constant patterns of bad behavior from her, then yeah she might have an early end to her career. If word gets out she's difficult to work with, nobody will want to work with her.
 
“There were times on that set where I even became almost unprofessional in a sense where I just started changing lines,” Ortega said, proudly citing the sort of actions that would get anybody else in any other profession fired.

“The script supervisor thought I was going with something and then I had to sit down with the writers, and they’d be like, ‘Wait, what happened to the scene?’ And I’d have to go and explain why I couldn’t go do certain things.”

Some of those things: “[Wednesday] being in a love triangle? It made no sense. There was a line about a dress she has to wear for a school dance and she says, ‘Oh, my God, I love it. Ugh — I can’t believe I said that. I literally hate myself.’ I had to go, ‘No.’”

Jenna, you’re in a mediocre spin-off of “The Addams Family” that’s best known for a flailing-arms dance on TikTok. Nothing about it makes sense.

When the writers are saying to you, “Wait, what happened to the scene?,” you have crossed an obvious line and are no longer doing your job.

This part is a good thing. Henry Cavill had to do the same for Witcher because Netflix writers can't seem to be consistent in quality. The fact that her doing this made Netflix appoint her as an executive producer on the next season means she is ambitious, which is also a good thing.
 

Ownage

Member
No self respecting dude wants to get with an entitled girl like this. She's a child. As with many stars, what goes up will come crashing down. Knives will be out.
 

badblue

Member
So the shit writers we have these days finally got told they're shit from the main actor who actually cares about the role and that's a bad thing?

Fuck off
My wife loves the show, so I've listened to it a fair amount. Wednesday saying "Oh, my God, I love it. Ugh — I can’t believe I said that. I literally hate myself" would have been at odds with her character. Showing that through non-verbal expression would have been the way to convey that. I don't watch the show, so I don't know if she did or not.

Bunch of fart sniffers in the writers room.
iu
 

Saiyan-Rox

Member
My wife loves the show, so I've listened to it a fair amount. Wednesday saying "Oh, my God, I love it. Ugh — I can’t believe I said that. I literally hate myself" would have been at odds with her character. Showing that through non-verbal expression would have been the way to convey that. I don't watch the show, so I don't know if she did or not.

Bunch of fart sniffers in the writers room.
iu

Yeah I no way is that something Wednesday would say and these are the idiots who are paid to write this shit.

No wonder Henry left Witcher these idiots don't care anymore.
 

TheInfamousKira

Reseterror Resettler
"She’s about to do a cam show in the bathroom."

Each to their own, I guess

I wish she'd do a cam show on my penis

shaped bean bag streamer chair. It's nice and buoyant so it would be super fun for us to sit there and fuck
with local multiplayer while I smile because she sucks dick
at FPS games, but that's okay, because I'm gonna come inside of her
noob brain and rearrange her gaming habits.
I'd have plenty of the sex with her lady hole.
 

Nobody_Important

“Aww, it’s so...average,” she said to him in a cold brick of passion
An actor being difficult on set? Well I never...


Also this sounds more like her giving a shit and wanting the show to be good than it does her being a pointless diva making everyone's lives miserable for the fun of it.


i would always rather have someone like her on my favorite shows than a puppet that just takes the check and doesn't care.
 
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Jenna has spoken about the difficulty of working with multiple directors (Tim Burton only directed the first four eps) and writers on Wednesday, before it aired on the streaming service. She said they all wanted something different out of her and her character. She didn't feel it was consistent. Supposedly, Burton was very supportive of her.

Regardless, she clearly compromised with the show. She hasn't been shy about what she feel's about Wednesday's character, and she has said she found it hard to justify the love triangle in the show. She mentioned the famous dance scene originally played a ton of homage to the Christina Ricci take on the same character from an Adams Family movie, but the director/producer/whoever cut almost all of it out and favored the new stuff Jenna came up with.

I'm not sure I agree with this article. She sounds more like a Henry Cavill behind the scenes, passionate about playing a consistent character. I don't know how woke Jenna herself is, but some of the directors that came on after Burton were absolutely drinkers of that brand, so I'm not feeling peeved that the star actress that is in almost every single dag on scene in that Netflix show wanted her input valued as well.

BTW, for the sequel, she's already said they're getting a fresh writing team so... we'll see how she works with the newer people.

Edit: Some source links:
https://www.joblo.com/jenna-ortega-felt-defeated-working-with-multiple-directors-on-wednesday/
https://bleedingcool.com/tv/wednesday-season-2-writers-room-very-fresh-ortega-on-tough-filming/




Her fixing the nonsense that a couple of hack writers crapped out isn't a big deal. Her racism and selfishness on X are another matter. I was actually a fan until all that and honestly her Wednesday performance is pretty overrated.
What's this about? I'm curious.
 
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NecrosaroIII

Ask me about my terrible takes on Star Trek characters
Mixed feelings on this. On one hand, i think actors understanding of their characters is sort of overrated. For example, Patrick Stewart clearly has no idea what made Picard Picard, based on his involvement on the new series. So her assuming she knows the character better than the writers can be construed as arrogant. They =/= the character, at the end of the day.

But neither are the writers, and this becomes more complicated when you're dealing with established characters from a legacy franchise. And it sounds like these writers did indeed suck. But it's kind of bad form to throw them under the bus publically.
 

Doom85

Member
I remember Mark Hammil refused to say a certain line in Star Wars Episode 4 because he told George Lucas no human being would speak like this (essentially foreshadowing the prequels’ dialogue quality). “Clearly” he should have been fired on the spot for his “unprofessionalism”.

The Office Reaction GIF
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
The article is written in a way to twist her self-deprecating words from the podcast and paraphrase them with scare quotes in order to change the tone to fit the article's narrative. Does the finished product have good writing? If so, then Ortega did a good job. Did any of the writer's give a first hand account of Ortega's so-called "unprofessionalism" in a negative way? The author's attempts to put these actions on a comparable level to another actor physically abusing her co-workers is also grasping at straws.

When an article is low on substance, and high on logical reaches, assumptions, unfair comparisons, and chopped up quotations, that's how you know there's a narrative at play. Criticize her about other things, but trying to go at her over this is a stretch.
 
I don't know who this guy is or how bad they are, but almost no one has their career killed for making comments for being difficult to work with if that's even the case here. That's pretty much Hollywood 101 for almost every actor. Except Walkin, apparently Christopher Walkin since he was put in show business as a kid just does the same approach and clicks with everyone. To my knowledge no one has cited him as difficult to work with, may be the exception.

Worst may be charlie sheen or Snipes.
 
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F0rneus

Tears in the rain
Jenna's great. she's cool, she is a new Scream Queen and she took control of the character like an artist should, and the creatives didn't push her away. She is NOT above Tim Burton but if she had ideas and he liked that, so what really? Non story.
 
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GMCamaro

Member
Bringing a show from inception to final product is a major collaborative effort. If she felt that something worked better for the character and apparently the results show it was the right call, then in my opinion I don’t see the major issue. The director must have agreed when filming as well. A good script is the backbone, but it shouldn’t be treated as set in stone.
 
I remember Mark Hammil refused to say a certain line in Star Wars Episode 4 because he told George Lucas no human being would speak like this (essentially foreshadowing the prequels’ dialogue quality). “Clearly” he should have been fired on the spot for his “unprofessionalism”.

The Office Reaction GIF
It's a shame the game of thrones cast didn't push back harder regarding season 8, because you could tell by the awkward looks when reading the script together, that some of them knew something was off/wrong.



They were fast to point it out after the premiere though.

 

TheInfamousKira

Reseterror Resettler
Bringing a show from inception to final product is a major collaborative effort. If she felt that something worked better for the character and apparently the results show it was the right call, then in my opinion I don’t see the major issue. The director must have agreed when filming as well. A good script is the backbone, but it shouldn’t be treated as set in stone.

Yeah, thirst shit posting aside, this. Anyone who says a production isn't a collaborative process are still stuck in the Golden Age Of cinema when studios were as tight lipped and secretive as the game industry has been/still is because filmmaking techniques and art department trickery were treated like industry secrets so as not to be stolen and, worst case scenario, God forbid, be done better by others.

Now in the age of making ofs and interviews and Blu Ray featurettes and such, the process from inception to release and beyond is well documented (and regrettably mostly filled with nerds talking about how this film's CG is the BEST ever for 35 minutes)

But I digress. Productions like The Last of Us were openly essentially discussions with different invested people at every level of production. It's a sublime example of group effort and group compromise and it's special exactly because there was an empassioned discussion about everything from what the foliage in this abandoned street should look like all the way into what character motivations should be and even who to feature on the cover art.

Those without ambition criticize what they perceive as brazen, but speaking your opinion, especially about something you're attaching your physical presence to forever, should never be criticized. It's only when we stop questioning that we stop learning. Live long and prosper. Make It so. Can't see shit, captain, etc.
 
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