‘Wednesday’: Jenna Ortega Reveals Why She Had to Put Her Foot Down on Set

“There were times on that set where I even became almost unprofessional in a sense.”

Jenna Ortega is gearing up for the murder spree set to hit theaters this Friday with the release of Scream VI. Staring alongside Melissa Barrera, Ortega is in for a New York City nightmare at the hands of Ghostface. In her most recent work, starring as Wednesday Addams in Netflix’s Wednesday, Ortega was not the recipient of fear for the most part but the harbinger. The actress’ performance playing the gothic daughter of the Addams family made the series Netflix’s second-biggest English-language series of all time. However, to get there new directions had to be taken by the actress.

Speaking in a recent episode of the Armchair Expert podcast per Variety, Ortega revealed that parts of the scripts for Wednesday did not make sense to her from a character standpoint and she decided to change dialogue without informing the writers. “When I read the entire series, I realized, ‘Oh, this is for younger audiences,’” Ortega said. “When I first signed onto the show, I didn’t have all the scripts. I thought it was going to be a lot darker. It wasn’t… I didn’t know what the tone was, or what the score would sound like.”

The Scream VI star goes on to further expand her thought process, saying:

“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’. Everything that Wednesday does, everything I had to play, did not make sense for her character at all. Her 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.’ There were times on that set where I even became almost unprofessional in a sense, where I just started changing lines. 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.”

RELATED: ‘Scream VI’: Melissa Barrera On the Audience Reaction to Sam in ‘Scream 5’

Jenna Ortega’s Instincts Paid Off

Ortega’s take on the scripts seems to have paid off massively as Wednesday has enjoyed an over six-week run of consistently passing a billion minutes watched on Netflix. Its popularity with younger audiences as well as having its own viral bits might have inadvertently contributed positively to the series being renewed for a second season. While we wait for Wednesday’s return to Nevermore, we can enjoy Ortega’s next performance in Scream VI.

Scream VI slashes its way to theaters on March 10. Watch Collider’s interview with Ortega and her castmate, Melissa Barrera, for Scream VI: