Jenna Ortega under fire for saying she was ‘an unhappy person' after ‘Wednesday' fame: ‘Cry me a river'
Jenna Ortega has come under fire for saying she was 'an unhappy person' after getting famous for her role as Wednesday Addams in the hit Netflix show 'Wednesday.'
The 22-year-old actress opened up about the role and the fame it brought her during an interview with Harper's Bazaar published on Wednesday, May 28.
'To be quite frank, after the show and trying to figure everything out, I was an unhappy person,' Ortega admitted. 'After the pressure, the attention – as somebody who's quite introverted, that was so intense and so scary.'
11 Ortega on the cover of the June 3 issue of Harper's Bazaar.
Willy Vanderperre for Harper's Bazaar
11 The scream queen said that playing Wednesday Addams can feel 'very patronizing.'
Willy Vanderperre for Harper's Bazaar
Ortega, who began filming the first season of 'Wednesday' in 2021, added that she felt 'incredibly misunderstood' upon getting popular from the show.
'I feel like being a bully is very popular right now,' she added. 'Having been on the wrong side of the rumor mill was incredibly eye-opening.'
11 Ortega previously came under fire for other comments she made about 'Wednesday' back in March 2023.
Willy Vanderperre for Harper's Bazaar
11 Some critics slammed Ortega for what she said during her interview with Harper's Bazaar.
Willy Vanderperre for Harper's Bazaar
11 Other fans defended the 'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice' starlet.
Willy Vanderperre for Harper's Bazaar
Elsewhere in her interview, the scream queen said that being Wednesday Addams is 'very patronizing' because she is stuck playing a schoolgirl on the screen despite becoming a young woman in real life.
Ortega, whose birthday is Sept. 27, will turn 23 shortly after the second season of 'Wednesday' premieres on Netflix on Aug. 6.
'I'm doing a show I'm going to be doing for years where I play a schoolgirl,' Ortega explained. 'But I'm also a young woman. You just don't feel like you're being taken seriously.'
11 Jenna Ortega opened up about her role on 'Wednesday' and the fame it brought her during a new interview with Harper's Bazaar.
JONATHAN HESSION/NETFLIX
'You know, it's like how you're dressed in the schoolgirl costume,' she added. 'There's just something about it that's very patronizing.'
But Ortega's remarks created a serious backlash, with several of her critics rushing to social media to bash the former 'Scream' star over her surprising comments.
'I bet the huge 6 and 7 figure paychecks she took for the role weren't that patronizing though,' one person tweeted after the interview.
11 Ortega said that she felt 'incredibly misunderstood' upon getting popular from the show.
Getty Images for Netflix
'Cry me a river,' someone else added, while a third critic commented, 'So sick of people complaining about easy jobs they made millions on.'
'Then she could have passed on the role,' a fourth person wrote on X. 'I like her but this seems like biting the hand that feeds you.'
However, Ortega's supporters defended the 'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice' starlet over what she had to say about her role on 'Wednesday' and the popularity it brought her as an actress.
11 Ortega as Wednesday Addams in the first season of 'Wednesday.'
COURTESY OF NETFLIX
'She isn't wrong,' one supporter wrote.
'Fair play to her,' another added, while a third fan tweeted, 'She looked nice as Wednesday.'
'Yall need to leave this girl alone,' a fourth fan commented.
11 The second season of the hit Netflix show is set to premiere in August.
COURTESY OF NETFLIX
Meanwhile, Ortega also clarified that she remains 'very grateful' for the fandom she has received because of 'Wednesday.'
'I want to be able to give back to them,' she said of her fans. 'But I also want to do things that are creatively fulfilling to me.'
The 'Death of a Unicorn' star received similar backlash for comments she made in March 2023.
11 Ortega at the premiere of her newest film, 'Hurry Up Tomorrow,' on May 13.
Getty Images
At the time, Ortega revealed that she had changed parts of her 'Wednesday' script when certain lines 'did not make sense for her character at all.'
'I don't think I've ever had to put my foot down more on a set in a way that I had to on 'Wednesday,'' she said during a podcast interview with Dax Shepard at the time.
Ortega later backtracked on those remarks, admitting that she 'could have used my words better' when talking with Shepard about the show.
11 'I want to be able to give back to them,' Ortega said of her 'Wednesday' fans. 'But I also want to do things that are creatively fulfilling to me.'
COURTESY OF NETFLIX
'To be fair, I think I probably could have been — I probably could have used my words better in describing all of that,' she told Vanity Fair in September 2024.
'I think, oftentimes, I'm such a rambler,' she added. 'I think it was hard because I felt like had I represented the situation better, it probably would've been received better.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
‘Wednesday' Season 1 Recap: Everything To Remember For Season 2
Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) got up to plenty of mischief and adventure in Season 1 of the eponymous Netflix series, created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. The coming-of-age series centering the young heroine as she carves out her own path amongst her Outcast peers at Nevermore Academy had plenty of mystery and investigation, none of which daunted her. Some might even say it was the social scene at school that haunted her more than a mysterious monster lurking in the woods, students keeping secrets from her and those very obviously and vocally out to get her. More from Deadline 'Wednesday' Season 2: Everything We Know About The Cast, Premiere Date & More 'Wednesday' Renewed For Season 3 By Netflix Matty Brown Talks 'The Sand Castle' As Migrant Drama Becomes Most Watched Arabic Language Title On Netflix In First Half Of 2025 For those needing a refresher about what happened in Wednesday Season 1 ahead of the arrival of Season 2 Part 1, below lies a recap of the most salient plot points. Wednesday Enrolled At Nevermore Academy At the start of the series, viewers watch Wednesday pour two bags of piranha in the Nancy Reagan High School swimming pool to send a message to one of the swimmers, Dalton, who bullied her younger brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) by shutting him in a locker, tied up, with an apple in his mouth. This action gets her expelled from the 'Normie' high school. She's been to 8 schools in 5 years. Wednesday comes from a family of Outcasts, or people with special abilities that set them apart from regular humans. Wednesday's psychic ability had just begun to show at the beginning of Season 1. She inherits the visions from her mother, Morticia Addams (née Frump), played by Catherine Zeta-Jones. Morticia, Pugsley and her father Gomez (Luis Guzmán) accompanied Wednesday to Nevermore Academy, a school teeming with Outcasts in Jericho, Vermont. Morticia and Gomez met at Nevermore — founded in 1791, and Morticia roomed with Principal Larissa Weems (Gwendoline Christie). A condition of Wednesday starting mid-term at Nevermore was that she attend therapy sessions with Jericho's own Dr. Valerie Kinbott (Rikki Lindhome), but Wednesday is reluctant to participate. Her Roommate Enid Is Quite The Opposite In Personality and Décor Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers) is Wednesday's roommate at Nevermore, and Enid loves color. Wednesday is allergic to color, so she strips her half of the room, only decorating in black and white. Even her school uniform is black and white. Enid's bubbly personality clashes with Wednesday's keep-to-herself exterior, but slowly the two form a distinct bond that culminates in a heartfelt hug, which Wednesday resists until the Season 1 finale. Enid descends from werewolves, but she had not yet 'Wolfed Out,' meaning undergone the full transformation. The furthest she could get is sharpening her rainbow-manicured nails into sharp acrylic-like claws. Luckily Enid's ability came at just the right time later on in the show, and after she stood up to her mother, who was putting pressure on her to go to lycanthropy conversion camps. Enid introduced Wednesday to the social scene at Nevermore — the four main cliques being Furs, Fangs, Stoners and Scales. Furs are werewolves, Fangs are vampires, Stoners are gorgons and Scales are sirens, leader of whom is Bianca Barclay (Joy Sunday). She used to date Xavier Thorpe (Percy Hynes-White), 'resident tortured artist' as Enid describes him. Xavier is an Unknown, but his ability is soon revealed as visions too, which appear in his dreams. He usually transcribes what he sees to paper, and he can make his drawings and paintings come to life. Wednesday's Visions Portend Something Bad Happening At Nevermore Just as she started classes, Wednesday began to have visions. These occur when she comes in contact with a person or object. Her mother left her with an Aztec necklace made of obsidian that priests used to conjur visions. Her first premonition took place while she escaped a therapy session in Jericho and she bumped into an apple farmer, foreseeing his death by a mysterious creature responsible for several other murders in the woods surrounding Jericho and Nevermore. After Rowan (Calum Ross) tried to push a gargoyle statue onto her to kill her, she bumped into him at the Harvest Festival and foresaw his death right before it happened. RELATED: Also in that vision, she saw a mysterious book, fire being set to the Nevermore Quad (Pentagon) and more. The Nightshades Rowan, a telekinetic, claimed his mother foresaw Wednesday in a vision with Joseph Crackstone, founder of Jericho, 25 years ago. He vowed to prevent that from coming true by killing her at his mother's behest because she would destroy the school, but this backfired as the mysterious monster came out of the shadows and killed Rowan. Wednesday tracked down the book from which Rowan ripped his mother's illustration of her and Crackstone backed by a fire. A faded symbol in the upper right-hand corner led her to secret society The Nightshades — members including Bianca, Ajax (Georgie Farmer), Xavier, Divina (Johnna Dias-Watson), Yoko (Naomi J. Ogawa) and Kent (Oliver Watson). Technically, the society lost its charter years ago, but Principal Weems looked the other way as long as they didn't cause trouble. Wednesday's mother was in The Nightshades as well. The Love Triangle Xavier saved Wednesday from the above-mentioned gargoyle incident early on in the series and re-introduced himself after the two had met when they were young at a funeral of one of Wednesday's grandmother's friends. He had hid in the casket and almost got cremated. Wednesday heard him screaming and saved his life. RELATED: Xavier was one of Wednesday's love interests last season, but he competed with Tyler (Hunter Doohan) a Normie Wednesday met at Jericho's Weathervane coffeeshop in town after she escaped from her first therapy session. The Hyde Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen), who appeared in Episode 7 of Season 1, helped Wednesday identify the monster killing people in the woods and taking their body parts by pointing her towards Nathaniel Faulkner's diary, which was in The Nightshades' secret library. As she delved further into the research about Hydes, Wednesday realized that she must track down two people responsible for the killings — the Hyde itself, which she knows is a human because she saw its monstrous footprints transition back into human ones in the mud after an encounter — and its master, the person who has unlocked the Hyde's nature within the human. Because the Hyde haunted Xavier's dreams and he constantly paints it — as discovered by Wednesday in his hidden art studio — she suspected Xavier is the Hyde. And when she saw him call for an emergency session with Dr. Kinbott, she believed Kinbott was responsible for unlocking the Hyde. Turns out, Tyler was the Hyde. His mother was also a Hyde, and she attended Nevermore. Hunter's father Sheriff Donovan Galpin (Jamie McShane) failed to ever mention this detail, but the trauma of her post-partem depression triggering the condition passed onto Tyler, and his master used that information to unlock the creature in him as well. More on the master below. Garrett Gates – Gomez's Shady Past Sheriff Galpin also immediately pinpointed Wednesday because her father had a file with the Jericho Police Department from his days as a student at Nevermore. When Gomez was arrested for murder at Nevermore's Parents' Weekend, Wednesday gets on the case and digs up the dead body of the boy her dad supposedly killed, Garrett Gates. This all happened at the Goth & Glamor Rave'N her parents attended when Garrett approached Morticia, who was the one responsible for stabbing Garrett with a sword. The blue tinge of Garrett's corpse's finger signals that he was poisoned, though, and this led to the discovery that Garrett's father had sent him to the Rave'N to poison the outcasts, only the poison vial cracked and leeched into his skin instead. RELATED: Garett was brother to Laurel Gates, who had supposedly died by drowning overseas when she was sent away from Jericho as an orphan, but later on in the show, Wednesday, Enid and Tyler discover that someone is living in the old Gates mansion in Laurel's bedroom. Principal Weems Died Principal Weems, who had grown fed up with Wednesday's relentless pursuit of the truth, granting Wednesday one last favor to visit Eugene Ottinger Ottinger (Moosa Mostafa) in the hospital after the Hyde had attacked him. There, Eugene tipped Wednesday off as to who the Hyde's master was. Wednesday figured out that Weems was a shapeshifter with Morticia's memory of Weems' 'dead ringer' impression of Judy Garland. This confirmed that it was Weems disguised as Rowan leaving school following his death. Thus, Wednesday had Weems pretend to be Tyler in a confrontation with none other than Nevermore's first Normie teacher Ms. Marilyn Thornhill (Christina Ricci), who was actually Laurel Gates. They drew the confession out of her that she was the Hyde's master, but unfortunately when Weems changed back, Laurel killed her by injecting her with poison. This death made way for Steve Buscemi's Principal Barry Dort. Joseph Crackstone, Laurel Gates & Goody Addams Once Xavier told Wednesday that it was Joseph Crackstone in the illustration, she made Enid switch volunteer assignments on Outreach Day so that she could investigate Pilgrim World, the theme park dedicated to the Founder of Jericho, who imprisoned and alter burned outcasts in a mass genocide, which Wednesday's ancestor Goody Addams (also portrayed by Jenna Ortega) survived. Goody, one of the original outcasts, came over from Mexico, and her line leads to Gomez. At Pilgrim World, Wednesday didn't glean too much about Crackstone other than that he took Goody's Book of Shadows, but the real book had been replaced with a fake Etsy version. Goody later visited Wednesday in visions, and it was she who guided her descendant to the Gates mansion. Goody began to be Wednesday's spirit guide, teaching her the ways of her visions, but she sacrificed her afterlife self to save Wednesday from dying, disappearing from the realm Wednesday looked into in her visions. RELATED: This near-death experience took place when Laurel Gates dragged Wednesday to Crackstone's Crypt, clarifying the purpose of the missing body parts of the Hyde victims. Laurel planned to resurrect Crackstone, using Wednesday's DNA, an incantation and a crazy machine to channel his spirit into a sewn-together body. Crackstone came back to life in the Frankenstein-esque body, but Goody, before she vanished, told Wednesday to stab him in his black heart to kill him, which Wednesday eventually did with the help of Bianca, Xavier and even Enid, who wolfed out just in time to battle Tyler's Hyde in the woods. Someone Almost Killed Thing Before the identities of the Hyde and its master were revealed, someone stabbed Thing, the detached hand that is the Addams family's companion, in the back and left him hanging in Wednesday's room. Wednesday whisked the dexterous appendage and his digits to her Uncle Fester, who wass sleeping in Eugene's bee shed, to revive him with his electric shock ability. This scene held the most emotion viewers saw from Wednesday, who cried and willed Thing back to life Earlier on in the show, Wednesday had shared with Enid that she hadn't cried since she was 6 years old when some bullies ran over and killed her pet scorpion Nero. Wednesday Gets an iPhone, and a Stalker The show left off with Xavier, who was first framed for being the Hyde and then released, gifting Wednesday a phone. The vibe between the pair was uncertain as she had kissed Tyler, which then gave her a vision that he was the Hyde. White will not be returning to Season 2 of Wednesday. As Lurch (George Burcea) drove her away from her first semester at Nevermore in the snow, Wednesday received several texts from a mysterious stalker. RELATED: Best of Deadline 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Emmys, Oscars, Grammys & More 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery
3 hours ago
Wendy's teams up with Netflix's 'Wednesday' for Meal of Misfortune
Announced on July 23, the limited-time Meal of Misfortune will be available at Wendy's nationwide starting Monday, Aug. 4, according to a press release. The chain describes the meal as "pure punishment in a bag" and reveals that it was designed by Wednesday Addams herself, dubbed "the other pig-tailed outcast." The Meal of Misfortune features "Dips of Dread," four fiery mystery sauces, along with "Rest in 10-Piece" Nuggets, small "Cursed & Crispy" Fries, and a small "Raven's Blood" Frosty, all in custom packaging designed by Wednesday herself, the chain said. Each meal will include two random Dips of Dread, with names like "You Can't Hyde," "This Will Sting," "Grave Mistake" and "Nowhere to Woe." "Don't bother asking which sauce you'll get – you must surrender to your destiny," the announcement read. "Those brave enough to try them all must endure multiple visits." Fans can also indulge in the Raven's Blood Frosty, served with a "Spoon of Gloom" and Wednesday-inspired cups, featuring a dark cherry swirl. In the release, Lindsay Radkoski, U.S. Chief Marketing Officer of The Wendy's Company, described the Wendy's and Wednesday collaboration as an ideal pairing. "Wendy's and Wednesday are both cultural icons famous for challenging convention with wit and a bit of sass," she said. "This isn't a typical collaboration, because not just any brand could scheme up a Meal of Misfortune with Wednesday Addams. But for a brand that's proudly customer-obsessed and unapologetically bold, it was a match made in dark, dry-witted heaven." Additionally, U.S. fans can compete for a chance to win $10,000 in the interactive game "Escape from Wednesday's Woe," available exclusively in the Wendy's app. The game features Wendy's x Wednesday treats, exclusive rewards, and classic game obstacles. "Normally I'd be against this kind of capitalistic corporate synergy," added Wednesday Addams, the Nevermore Academy student, in the release. "But when the fast-food-slinging pigtailed provocateur said I could do whatever I wanted to her customers, I couldn't resist."
USA Today
4 hours ago
- USA Today
Duchess Meghan turns 44: British royal gets sweet birthday shoutout from As Ever brand
Duchess Meghan may be busy building her business kingdom, but today she's being crowned. The British American royal and entrepreneur, who turned 44 on Monday, Aug. 4, received a warm birthday shoutout on Instagram from her lifestyle brand As Ever, which launched in April to fan acclaim. The company, which has become known for its homey aesthetic and assortment of fruit spreads, herbal teas and baking mixes, shared a black-and-white photo of the duchess wearing a sun dress and wide-brimmed hat alongside its celebratory message. "Celebrating the woman behind it all," the company wrote in the post's caption. "She pours her heart, vision and magic touch into every detail, and today, we raise a glass to her! Happy birthday to our founder @meghan 🥂" See Duchess Meghan's daughter Lilibet: Young princess makes adorable cameo in As Ever teaser Meghan, who is married to Prince Harry, has yet to share any glimpses of her birthday festivities with her 4.1 million Instagram followers. The Duchess of Sussex has been more open about her family life with Harry, which includes children Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, with a series of candid posts. Meghan first teased As Ever in March 2024 when she made a buzzy return to Instagram after a yearslong social media hiatus to introduce fans to the lifestyle project, formerly named American Riviera Orchard. The duchess later revealed she renamed the brand As Ever because the previous title, a reference to her and Harry's Montecito residence, "limited me to things that were just manufactured and grown in this area." The first As Ever drop sold out in under an hour, and one product — the limited-edition wildflower honey with honeycomb for $28 — had fans buzzing, selling out in less than five minutes. The featured products in the company's first collection included $12 herbal tea in three flavors: hibiscus, peppermint and lemon ginger. 'You have to be authentic': Duchess Meghan responds to twerking video backlash The lifestyle brand teased its upcoming release, a vintage rosé wine, in an Instagram video on Aug. 3. "Goodness in a glass. Right around the corner... Cheers to August!" the company wrote alongside the teaser. As Ever is produced alongside Netflix, which also distributes Meghan's lifestyle show "With Love, Meghan." The series premiered in March and was quickly renewed for a second season, although a release date has not been announced. Contributing: Taijuan Moorman and Jay Stahl, USA TODAY
