If you haven’t watched the Netflix series Wednesday yet, get on it, because Jenna Ortega is spectacular as the title character. If you have seen it, then you, like so many other people, know what I’m talking about: People can literally not take their eyes off her. So much so that the series now holds the English-language record for most hours viewed in a week for a TV series on the streaming platform, with 341.23 million hours watched. The show as a whole is great, and all the actors do a wonderful job, but much of the show’s success comes down to how freakin’ great Jenna is as Wednesday Addams.
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It’s also incredibly gratifying to see a young Latina star as the lead on a show that is breaking records. Of course, this isn’t Jenna’s first role. She’s young, but she’s not a newbie in the acting scene. She’s been acting since she was a little girl and has built quite the résumé. We have no doubt that she’s a global superstar in the making. Let’s take a moment to learn all about Jenna Ortega and how she got her start.
Jenna is a Libra.
She was born on September 27, 2002, in Coachella Valley, California. She’s the fourth of six children. She knew from a very young age that she wanted to pursue an acting career and let her mom know.
She’s part Mexican and part Puerto Rican.
“I am 75 percent Mexican and 25 percent Puerto Rican. My greatgrandma on my mother's side migrated from a small ranch near Sinaloa, Mexico,” she wrote in an essay for Popsugar when she was 13 years old.
A video that her mom posted on Facebook got her acting career started.
When Jenna was 9 years old, her mom posted a video of her as a 7-year-old doing a dramatic monologue. That video was seen by a family friend, who in turn shared it with a casting director, who in turn reached out to Jenna and her family.
In 2012, she got a part in a sitcom.
She was cast in the series Rob, starring comedian Rob Schneider. She was on one episode in a small role, but she was really excited about getting the job because Cheech Marin was on the show and she was a big fan.
In 2013, she landed a Colgate commercial.
OMG, she was the cutest and must have been around 11 years old when she was cast in a Colgate commercial fighting the “invisible nasties” that like to hide in our mouths. She did such a great job!
She played Young Jane on ‘Jane the Virgin.’
In 2014, she landed the role of Young Jane on the CW series Jane the Virgin. It was a recurring role playing the child version of Jane, who was played by Gina Rodriguez. It was around that time that she first started to get recognized by fans.
Where else have you seen or heard her?
She played the vice president’s daughter in Iron Man 3, the voice of Princess Isabel on Elena of Avalor, Harley Diaz in Stuck in the Middle, Ellie Alves on season 2 of You, and Tara Carpenter in Scream, to name just a few.
Being Latina has affected her career opportunities.
“As a Latina, there are not as many roles out there for me. When I first started out, it was hard,” she shared in her Popsugar essay. “I was constantly shut down because I did not have the look they were going for. You have to keep pushing. All of the nos I received just motivated me even more. I wanted to change the casting directors' point of view. I wanted to get rid of that description. That's what I did.”
She missed out on certain experiences because of her acting.
She went to public school up until high school, when she was homeschooled because she was working on Stuck in the Middle. She missed out on the traditional high school prom experience, but Disney has a prom “for their kids,” she told Jimmy Kimmel. When Jimmy reacted with surprise, Jenna said, "I think they're trying to make us feel normal, but it's just really awkward because you don't know these kids and their parents are there. It's a really sweet thing on Disney's part, but it is a bit odd."
She’s not afraid to take a stand.
In 2018, then-first lady Melania Trump wore a jacket that had “I REALLY DON’T CARE. DO U?” written on the back as she boarded a plane headed to Texas where she would be visiting detained migrant children. Like many, Jenna was appalled. In response, she attended the Radio Disney Music Awards that year in a jacket she had made with “I DO CARE AND U SHOULD TOO” written on the back.
She went on to explain why she was inspired to wear the specially made jacket.
“I remember I was going through the news on my phone and I saw what Melania wore on the way to visit the immigrant children. I was so deeply offended and right there at that moment I knew what I wanted my statement to be,” she told Forbes.
She was raised to stand up for what she believes in.
Part of why she felt compelled to take a stand after seeing Melania Trump's jacket was because she promised her mom when she started acting that she would use her influence for good. “That's how I was raised. I've always believed in giving back and standing up for what I believe in. We can make such a big change in the world if everyone used their voice,” she explained to Forbes.
She’s worked as an ambassador with UNAIDS.
UNAIDS is an organization dedicated to “leading the global effort to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals.” Her grandfather died from AIDS-related complications, and Jenna has said, “I want to help eliminate the stigma of AIDS and get people talking about it. Make it normal. Bring it up. It's a disease that affects all of us.”
She thought she was being pranked when she was asked to audition for ‘Wednesday.’
She had always been compared to Wednesday her whole life because of her dry sense of humor. So when she got an email saying that Tim Burton wanted to meet with her for the role of Wednesday, “I kind of felt like I was being pranked or something,” she said in an interview.
She used to be vegan.
"I was vegan for a really long time but I stopped vegan when I went to Romania to film Wednesday, actually," she explained during an interview with Wired. "The food is very different there and I don't think I was meeting my nutrition requirements. I started eating fish again so I'm currently pescatarian."
She was covered in blood when she auditioned for 'Wednesday.'
It wasn’t on purpose, either. She had just finished filming a death scene for the film X when she auditioned over Zoom for Wednesday director Tim Burton. She didn’t have time to wash off the fake blood she was covered in, and she also had blood on her chin from a prosthetic that cut her.
She learned to play the cello for her role as Wednesday.
Wednesday is an excellent cello player, and Jenna says she learned to play the cello a couple of months before she started shooting for the Netflix series. She also shared that it’s something she would like to “continue to pursue.”
She was careful not to do an ‘impression’ of Christina Ricci’s Wednesday.
Christina Ricci very memorably played Wednesday in the 1991 film The Addams Family and and again in the 1993 sequel Addams Family Values. Although Christina is also a part of the Netflix Wednesday cast, she and Jenna did not compare notes.
"I think maybe one time on the last week of shooting I made a reference to her Wednesday,” Jenna shared in an interview. “But I think that we both were able to appreciate the fact that they were gonna be different. I didn't wanna knock her off, and I didn't wanna be doing some impression of her. I think it was really important that we just kept our ideas separate."
She choreographed what is sure to become an iconic dance for years to come.
There is a scene in the show on episode four that features Wednesday at a school dance, and her moves are exquisite and so utterly Wednesday. Well, it turns out that Jenna actually came up with those moves herself.
Watch Jenna talk about so many firsts.
She sat down with Elle magazine and talked about her first commercial, the first time she was recognized, the first celebrity that she was super excited to meet, her first heartbreak, the first time she watched The Addams Family, and more.
