My Take on The Jenna Ortega vs. Wedensday Writers Situation.
In case you haven’t noticed, Hollywood, or better known as “Hollyweird”, is going through a bit of a mess right now with a seemingly long lasting writers strike and now an actors strike to boot.
With such turmoil going on in tinsel town it feels appropriate to discuss a specific issue with a certain talented young actress and the staff who wrote scripts for her latest Netflix sensation Wedensday. Wedensday took the world by storm and even broke Netflix’s record of views with 341.2 million viewing hours, beating Stranger Things season 4 which held 335 million views in its first week.
Jenna Ortega:
Star Jenna Ortega started off as the central character in Disney Channel Original Series Stuck In The Middle before headlining the revival of the Scream franchise. Born on September 27th, 2002 as the fourth of six children of both Mexican and Puerto Rican descent, Ms. Ortega has never really lived a “normal life” due to her career forcing her to miss out on such typical teenage milestones such as the prom and graduation. But despite this she has thrived in the industry of her choice and has garnered acclaim and prestigious award nominations from the Primetime Emmy Awards, the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Always being an outspoken young woman, Ortega has fought for both LGBT rights as well as pro-immigration and anti-discrimination. Her vocal and strong willed personality displayed in her fight for her causes plays a big part in her conflict with the writing staff on her show.
Link to Wikipedia for more info on Ms. Ortega:
The Conflict:
In a recent episode of Armchair Expert Podcast Ortega admitted that many of the original scripts of Wednesday made no sense to her from a character perspective, so much so that she went ahead and changed dialouge without consulting the writers.
Ortega: “When I read the entire series, I realized, ‘Oh, this is for younger audiences. 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. 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.”
She continued:
“I grew very, very protective of her. You can’t lead a story and have no emotional arc because then it’s boring and nobody likes you. When you are little and say very morbid, offensive stuff, it’s funny and endearing. But then you become a teenager and it’s nasty and you know it. There’s less of an excuse.”
While there haven’t been any responses to Ms. Ortega’s comments from the Wednesday writing staff as of yet, a few screenwriters in various television shows and movies have responded in bitingly witty fashion:
Nick Adams, Creator of Bojack Horseman tweeted:
Karen Joseph Adcock, writer of The Bear chimed in :
House Party 2023 writer, Brandon Cohen got cute with his own little picket sign caught by Variety:
My Take On The Whole Thing:
Here’s my take of this whole thing. As a writer myself I totally get where my fellow pen brothers and sisters are coming from. Writing is never easy, especially not doing so in the midst of that killer television grind. There are quite a few actors who are unappreciative and dismissive of the writing profession and those that put the words in their mouthes. All that said… I don’t think Jenna Ortega is one of them. I admit, I haven’t gotten around to checking out Wednesday yet, (hey, I’ll get around to it eventually) but listening to Jenna’s comments about the whole thing it doesn’t sound all that unreasonable. In fact, she sounds like a very astute actress that cares a great deal about her craft, which is more than I can say for a lot of actors this day and age, especially in her age group.
To be honest, Jenna isn’t alone in this practice. Many big time stars have been outspoken in favor of the quality of their projects including such iconic actors as Carroll O’Connor of All In The Family & In The Heat of The Night and Jack Klugman & Tony Randall from The Odd Couple were very outspoken when it came to the writing of their beloved television shows. Nothing else short of excellence was accepted and they pushed for that high level of quality for every episode of their shows. Now, did that mean that they were always the easiest to work with? Not necessarily. But their big contributions certainly seemed to have helped level up their shows to the iconic status that they have now.
Now we all know that there a plenty of situations where a primadonna “star” was the downfall of their projects due to massive egos and\or abusive behavior that made their sets toxic. But who’s to say whether Jenna Ortega is that type of star or not? Unless any of us has actually been on that set we weren’t there so we don’t exactly know whose really right or whose wrong. All we do know is that there have been plenty of situations where an actor with strong opinions and amazing talent elevated their material by speaking up or jumping in and fixing what they perceive was an oversight. The fact that the show is a huge success could be seen as a huge point in Jenna’s favor.
Is she a primadonna? Or is she just a very bright actress who knows her character and the source material far better than those who are writing the scripts? Again, who really knows? However, what we do know is that Jenna Ortega’s portrayal of the lovably morose Wednesday Addams has been very well received by many, and the show’s getting a season 2 after a very successful season 1. I dunno, the girl might just know what she’s talking about.
Till next time, folks!
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