Wednesday’s Jenna Ortega says she was “scared s***less” when show started: “I didn’t know what I was doing”

“I was scared s***less,” she says, plainly. “I didn’t know what I was doing, I met Tim once before starting to create the character. There was just an obscene amount of pressure and worry and I wasn’t sleeping… We didn’t even know that people were going to watch it.”

It sounds awful and, perhaps mindful that it sounds awful, Ortega pivots. “I mean that in an exciting way. I love being able to sink my teeth into something and give it my all.”

And Ortega did give Wednesday her all. She wanted to do justice to the character, she explains. As such, her research was extensive and forensic. Rather poetically, she describes it as a search to find the character as if Wednesday was out there somewhere, lost in the woods. Surprisingly, it was a quest that began with Buster Keaton and involved a lot of trial and error.

“Because a lot of what you hear of Wednesday speaking is in her head, I watched a lot of silent films when the actors’ eyes are telling the story,” Ortega explains. “And because she’s not allowed to give a lot of expression, I landed on Buster Keaton because he was known as the deadpan man.”

From there, she went on to explore Wednesday’s physicality. “So much of it was spending as much time as I could outside of work trying to physically become her. To walk like you’ve got teacups on your head and without swinging your arms too much – because when you swing your arms too much, you feel stupid for some reason. To not blink, as blinking feels like a sign of weakness and she doesn’t want to be caught off guard. When people stare at you, it can be intimidating and uncomfortable – and that’s what she is. She’s such a specific character, she lends herself to you, but it took a lot of trying to get there.”

Ortega is incredibly dedicated and fastidious. Because Wednesday speaks a few phrases of German in one episode, Ortega learnt German. Because we see Wednesday play the cello, Ortega actually learnt to play the instrument. No short cuts or sleights-of-hand. And Wednesday never blinks. As investments go, Ortega was all-in.

Happily – which isn’t a word you’d associate with Wednesday herself – Ortega’s investment paid dividends. Wednesday, with 252m views according to Netflix, is the world’s biggest English-language TV show – and second only to the first season of Squid Game (265 million) in the streamer’s global, multilingual, all-time top ten. Though the diffident Californian would never say it herself – and looks pained when I mention it – playing Wednesday makes Ortega the world’s biggest female TV actor, a position that was thrust upon the then 20-year-old in November 2022, when the streamer dropped the first season and it notched up a billion viewing hours in a month.

Factor in the merchandise bearing her likeness, the Halloween-costume homages, the myriad internet memes based on Wednesday’s delicious, deadpan one-liners, and the hundreds of thousands of YouTube and TikTok clips of an idiosyncratic dance sequence that have been watched billions of times, and Wednesday, and therefore Ortega, was everywhere, all at once. Though she was by no means an unknown prior to Wednesday – Ortega began performing when she was nine, landed the lead in a Disney Channel sitcom at 13, and was successfully transitioning from child actor, mostly via roles in horror movies – nothing could have prepared her for this catapult to global fame.

“Every once in a while I remember the magnitude of things,” Ortega says. From the look that flits across her face, and the way she says “really scary and really overwhelming”, this doesn’t appear to be an entirely pleasant experience.

Ortega is at pains to point out her “overwhelming gratitude” for the show’s popularity. “We put in so much time and effort, the fact that people connect with it is very, very lucky and we’re very, very honoured.”

That said, she admits that the last couple of years have been challenging. “I think I just kind of got in my head and was maybe a little bit too frightened and wasn’t accustomed to that kind of exposure.” She finds red-carpet events “bizarre” and out of her comfort zone, and thinks that being asked “Who are you wearing?” is “such a weird question”.

“I try not to live in that space too much because it’s not naturally human, not part of what we’re supposed to be exposed to,” she reflects. “I take a step away. It’s important to appreciate things but not dwell on them. I want to make sure I’m present in my everyday life.”

The truth is that Ortega is most comfortable on set. Being at work is her safe place.

“I understand what it is to move on set as a professional and to be number one on the call sheet, you definitely set the tone,” she says. “You want to make sure that everybody’s working in an environment where they feel heard and included and empowered. And I know what it takes to create a healthy work environment. And I want to make sure that everybody has that.”

For all the power, pressure and privilege coming her way, Ortega, to her credit, appears to navigate it all rather well. She credits her family background with keeping her grounded. It took her three years to persuade her parents – her mother Natalie, an ER nurse, and her father Edward, a sheriff – to allow her to pursue acting as a profession.

“I’m one of six kids and my siblings are all in completely different fields. I’m the only one who does this. When I go home and visit, it’s very easy to remember where I came from when I have such lovely people around me.”

What of her fictional family? What’s it like working with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Joanna Lumley? Ortega’s face lights up. “Some of the most glamorous, generous people I’ve ever met and had the pleasure to work with. Also talented. Unbelievably talented! I was so glad to have more scenes with Catherine this season. Yeah, obviously, Morticia is just such a delicious character, and Catherine has got the yummiest voice and persona, so it was really nice to be able to see her flesh that character out a bit more.

“And Joanna Lumley, as you know, isn’t just a national treasure but international. She’s just so beautiful, and she’s everything that you hoped she would be, and she calls you darling, and you melt to the floor. So it was just the best. And being able to work with two strong, beautiful women, all three of us playing strong, stubborn characters, was just so much fun. It’s exactly the kind of environment I like to work in.”

Is Wednesday a feminist show? “Yes, definitely. I think the whole show should be empowering to anybody, really, but I’m really proud of how strong our female characters are. Even outside the Addams family, in [Wednesday’s fellow high school students] Enid and Bianca, they’re very complex and layered people. And I think that there’s a woman for everyone.”

As for getting back into character for the second season, how easy – or difficult – was it, after the search for Wednesday before season one?

“It’s such a gift to revisit a character that is so meaningful to so many people, myself included,” Ortega says. As for the labours of finding Wednesday’s physicality? “At this point, it’s all muscle memory.”

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Wednesday season 2 is streaming from Wednesday 6 August on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.

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