Gough and Millar, who also worked with Ortega on the new film Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, reflected on the controversy in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. While Gough admitted that it wasn’t “pleasant” to see the criticism at the time, he wasn’t exactly surprised, as he’d observed this kind of behavior with young actors going back to previous shows they’d worked on. Millar reiterated how their working relationship with Ortega has not only continued, but expanded in a major way, given how the young actor is now serving as a producer on the second season of Wednesday.
“That’s hard,” Gough said of Ortega’s initial criticism. “We’ve done a few of these shows, like Smallville, which was a big hit out of the gate. Suddenly, you have these young stars in the spotlight. They’re going to misstep. They’re going to say things. I think you just have to give them grace and know that it happens. It’s never pleasant, but it just comes with the territory. I think we’re at the point now where the internet’s going to do what the internet’s going to do. What you don’t want to do is give these things oxygen.”
It’s never pleasant, but it just comes with the territory.
Millar added, “We work with Jenna very closely on the show. We obviously worked with her on Beetlejuice. It’s always an incredibly collaborative and joyful experience. We couldn’t be prouder of her work and we’ve embraced her as a producer on the show this year. She is one of the hardest working, most talented young actresses in the business, and we are very lucky and feel very proud that she’s working with us. So it is what it is. A show of this size and this scale is always going to have people chattering. But it’s not our reality or her reality.”
The controversy stems from an appearance Ortega made on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast in 2023. She said she had grown “very, very protective” of the Wednesday Addams character, which led to her becoming “almost unprofessional” as she’d start “changing lines” on her own. Ortega later showed regret over her comments in a Vanity Fair interview, suggesting it sounded worse than how she’d meant it.
Jenna Ortega Said She Could Have ‘Used [Her] Words Better”
“I probably could have used my words better in describing all of that,” she said. “I think, oftentimes, I’m such a rambler. I think it was hard because I felt like had I represented the situation better, it probably would’ve been received better.”
Season 2 of Wednesday doesn’t yet have a premiere date set at Netflix.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
