Wednesday Addams Official Trailer. Video / Netflix
Filmmaker and TV producer Steven DeKnight has blasted Wednesday actress Jenna Ortega as “entitled” and “beyond toxic”.
DeKnight wrote that Ortega “publicly s***” on the producers and writers of the hit Netflix spinoff of The Addams Family.
DeKnight made the sensational claims on Twitter, adding he loved Ortega’s work but that “life’s too short to deal with people like this in the business”.
His outburst was sparked after Ortega spoke on the podcast Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard where she admitted she became “almost unprofessional” as she struggled with material from the show.
DeKnight wrote in another widely shared tweet that Ortega should have approached her concerns in a much more professional manner.
“She’s young, so maybe she doesn’t know any better (but she should),” he wrote.
She’s young, so maybe she doesn’t know any better (but she should). She should also ask herself how she would feel if the showrunners gave an interview and talked about how difficult she was and refused to perform the material.
“She should also ask herself how she would feel if the showrunners gave an interview and talked about how difficult she was and refused to perform the material.”
In the podcast Ortega said that nothing about the character Wednesday “made sense to her”.
“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,’” she shared.
She continued to give examples of some out-of-character moments in the show: “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.
Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams. Photo / Netflix
“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.”
Ortega said part of decision to speak up was to protect her own reputation.
“You can’t lead a story and have no emotional arc because then it’s boring and nobody likes you,” she said.
“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.”
Now that I listened to the podcast, it definitely was taken out of context. It wasn't meant as harsh as it sounds when it was taken out of context.
Ortega also told Elle magazine that she is “so fearful” of disappointing people and not living up to people’s expectations.
“I want to live up to people’s expectations, which is something that I need to get over, but I’m also scared that, I don’t know, maybe someone will get to know me too well and realise that I’m not all that.”
Wednesday is Netflix’s second biggest English-language series of all time.
