“I don’t know what it is about my face,” Jenna Ortega says. “But people always want to throw blood on it.” This might not be a quality that comes in handy for everyone, but it has for Ortega, who’s the latest incarnation of one of the most beloved goths of all time: Wednesday Addams.
The day Ortega met Oscar-nominated director Tim Burton, Miles Millar, and Alfred Gough — the creative trio who would cast her in Wednesday — she had been screaming bloody murder for 12 hours
. She Zoomed with the transcontinental team from New Zealand, where she was shooting Ti West’s bloody horror romp X, glycerin and fake red gore still in her hair, and a prominent, prosthetic gash on her forehead.
Usually, Ortega tries not to learn too much about the people she’s auditioning for, to avoid getting stuck in her head. But that isn’t possible when one of those people has directed everything from Beetlejuice to Corpse Bride; in Wednesday’s case, Burton would serve as executive producer and director. Luckily, Ortega hadn’t slept in 24 hours, and was feeling loopy enough to just “wing it.”
