Jenna Ortega reveals that she did not take Wednesday fame well 

Wednesday became a global hit from the moment it was released in 2022. It also became the most-streamed show on Netflix, with over 252 million views. While Jenna Ortega had already been acting since she was nine, and had starred in Stuck in the Middle, Jane the Virgin, and You, Wednesday took her fame to another level.

Jenna Ortega became the modern face of Wednesday Addams, and people became her fans quickly. You would think that Ortega must have basked in that fame, but she did not. Her experience was quite the opposite. In an interview with Harper's Bazaar, Jenna Ortega spoke candidly about playing Wednesday and how the fame felt right after.

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Jenna Ortega on fame after Wednesday

Jenna Ortega had never really played a character like Wednesday before. She was a child actor on Disney, and none of her other roles were exactly spooky either. In the interview with Harper's Bazaar, Ortega talked about the pros and cons of playing the character. She said,

“I definitely feel like I have a bit more Gothic taste than I did when I was a teenager. I’ve always been into dark things or been fascinated by them, but I was a Disney kid, and the whole thing is being bubbly and kind and overly sweet.”

She then talked about the not-so-pleasant part, saying,

“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.”

While viewers do not see anything unnatural about Ortega's fame after she played Wednesday, Jenna Ortega surely does. She thinks the character might have gotten popular for the wrong reasons when she said,

“I feel like being a bully is very popular right now,”

“Having been on the wrong side of the rumor mill was incredibly eye-opening.”

Not only that, but Jenna also felt

“incredibly misunderstood”

When she got famous after Wednesday, because she was nothing like the character. If one looked closely, one might notice that Ortega was cast in Scream VI and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice right after she appeared in Wednesday. That did portary as an actress who only preferred the horror genre, when that was not the truth.

As for how Jenna Ortega felt after she got famous for playing Wednesday, the actress said to Harper's Bazaar,

“To be quite frank, after the show and trying to figure everything out, I was an unhappy person,”

She continued,

“After the pressure, the attention — as somebody who’s quite introverted, that was so intense and so scary.”

While viewers probably thought Ortega was happily embracing the fame, she was actually battling with it. While artists rarely talk about this side of fame, Ortega has been brave in admitting how she felt at the time.

Jenna Ortega also talked about how she felt regarding playing a teenager after having turned eighteen. Ortega had been a child actor for almost a decade before she acted in the Tim Burton series, and knew the cons of people having a preconceived notion of her based on her past. As she said to Harper's Bazaar,

“you just don’t feel like you’re being taken seriously.”

Ortega elaborates,

“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. Also, when you’re short, people are already physically looking down on you… 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.’ But you’re watching these women at the most pivotal times in their lives; they’re experimenting because that’s what you do.”

However, it is not that Jenna Ortega is ungrateful for all the love she has received since she starred in Wednesday. She acknowledges her fans' support and says,

“I want to be able to give back to them. But I also want to do things that are creatively fulfilling to me,”

Ortega elaborates,

“So it’s finding that balance of doing movies that they might be interested in and then doing movies that I’m interested in. [I want roles that are] older and bolder and different. And then I want to be able to line up all of my girls and see something different in all of them.”

It does look like Jenna Ortega is doing what is right for her by starring in films like Death of a Unicorn, Hurry Up Tomorrow, Klara and the Sun, and The Gallerist. Ortega has proved herself as an actor in several projects, and hopefully, the fame that will come next will be for not just the character she played, but her capabilities as an actress.

Wednesday season one is currently streaming on Netflix, and season two comes out in two parts, on 6th August and 3rd September 2025, respectively.

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