While actor Jenna Ortega was thrust into the spotlight after being cast as the titular character in Netflix’s “Wednesday,” she actor admitted in an interview that she was “an unhappy person.”
“To be quite frank, after the show and trying to figure everything out, I was an unhappy person,” Ortega told Harper’s Bazaar in an interview published Wednesday. “After the pressure, the attention — as somebody who’s quite introverted, that was so intense and so scary.”
Although Ortega, 22, had been acting since childhood, she rose to fame almost instantly, which quickly made her a target on social media. Fans and critics closely scrutinized her every action and upcoming roles. At the height of her popularity, she described feeling “incredibly misunderstood.”
“I feel like being a bully is very popular right now,” Ortega said. “Having been on the wrong side of the rumor mill was incredibly eye-opening.”
Being cast in “Wednesday” was a double-edged sword. On one hand, she got to explore her darker side.
“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 said.
The con is that in her current role, she is stuck playing a young girl.
“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.
Ortega admitted that portraying Wednesday might narrow the industry’s perception of her acting range. To challenge this, she committed to several diverse film projects after the first season’s conclusion, including A24’s “Death of a Unicorn,” “Hurry Up Tomorrow” alongside The Weeknd, Taika Waititi’s “Klara and the Sun,” and “The Gallerist” with Natalie Portman, Variety reported.
Reflecting on being a child star trying to carve her career as an adult, Ortega said, “You just don’t feel like you’re being taken seriously.”
“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.”
Ortega said she’s thankful for the global fanbase she gained from “Wednesday,” and that the support inspires her to build a career that reflects what her fans enjoy and her personal creative interests.
“I want to be able to give back to them. But I also want to do things that are creatively fulfilling to me,” she said. “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.”
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
