The curse of being Wednesday

Express Tribune

2 days ago

Jenna Ortega might have conquered Netflix, but she didn't come out of Wednesday unscathed.
In a refreshingly candid interview with Harper's Bazaar, Ortega revealed that the massive success of her gothic teen character left her more disoriented than delighted. "To be quite frank, after the show and trying to figure everything out, I was an unhappy person," she admitted. "The pressure and the attention, as somebody who's quite introverted, was so intense and scary."
With over 250 million views, Wednesday is Netflix's most-watched English-language show. But for Ortega, its impact has been double-edged. One side is creative opportunity; she's learned to play the cello, embraced a darker personal aesthetic, and landed edgy roles in A24's Death of a Unicorn and Taika Waititi's Klara and the Sun. The other side is the brutal social media surveillance, career typecasting, and the suffocating trap of image maintenance.
"I'm doing a show I'm going to be doing for years where I play a schoolgirl. But I'm also a young woman," she said. "There's just something about it that's very patronising. Also, when you're short, people are already physically looking down on you."
For Ortega, who's grown up in front of the camera, from Disney darling to Addams icon, the push-pull between public expectation and personal evolution is real. "You know, it's like how you're dressed in the schoolgirl costume. Girls, if they don't stay as this perfect image of how they were first introduced to you, then it's, 'Ah, something's wrong. She's changed. She sold her soul.'"
She's also experienced the uglier side of online fame. "I feel like being a bully is very popular right now," she said. "Having been on the wrong side of the rumour mill was incredibly eye-opening." Fame, for all its perks, can feel more like a trapdoor than a platform.
Still, Ortega isn't abandoning the fans that catapulted her to stardom. "I want to be able to give back to them. But I also want to do things that are creatively fulfilling to me," she explained. "It's finding that balance. [I want roles that are] older and bolder and different."
Ortega's career is clearly at a crossroads, and she's steering with intention. Between indie art films and blockbuster sequels, she's carving out space to grow, stumble, evolve. And with Wednesday Season 2 dropping in two parts this August, audiences will once again fall under her spell. But if Ortega has her way, they'll start to see past the pigtails.