Jenna Ortega Won't Stop Taking Risks – No Matter How Big 'Wednesday' Gets
Jenna Ortega is sitting in rare sunshine. Not a cloud in the sky, a gentle wind rustling the leaves above her. Wednesday Addams would despise it – but Ortega is basking in it.
The 23-year-old star of Netflix’s gothic juggernaut Wednesday has just wrapped a long day of shooting Season 3 in Dublin, where the weather is famously disagreeable. On this late June afternoon, however, the sun rules supreme, and Ortega is using the moment to put a little space between herself and her grim alter ego.
It’s a fitting metaphor for where she finds herself in her career: stepping into the light, taking chances, and refusing to play it safe – even as the world knows her as television’s most beloved brooder.
The Experimental Phase
Ortega’s résumé at 23 is staggering. From Scream and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice to the surrealist Death of a Unicorn and the provocative Miller’s Girl, she’s bounced between blockbuster franchises and offbeat originals with dizzying speed. And she’s not slowing down.
On the horizon: the title role in Taika Waititi’s Klara and the Sun – based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s best-selling novel – and J.J. Abrams’s highly secretive sci-fi fantasy The Great Beyond, due in October 2027.
“I’ve been in this experimental phase,” Ortega tells Esquire in a new interview. “It’s only been in the last year or so – especially with the show coming to a head and getting ready to enter this next chapter in my life and career – that I’ve really honed in. I’ve seen some things now. I’ve tried some things. Now it’s important to me to be focused on stories and characters that I feel truly connected to.”
That’s a significant shift from the child actor who once went entire days without asking for food or water on set, terrified of being “in the way.” Today, Ortega is choosing her own path – and she’s not afraid of stumbling along the way.
The Gambles That Didn’t Pay Off
Not every risk has been a winner. Hurry Up Tomorrow, the 2025 drama Ortega made with the Weeknd, underwhelmed viewers and became more meme than masterpiece. But she doesn’t frame it as a mistake.
“One hundred percent, yeah. I don’t know if I can ever categorize anything as a mistake,” she says. “Good or bad, you’re going to learn from it.”
That philosophy has become her compass. Ortega says she’s gotten “such a better understanding of who I am as a person and what I want from the world” through trial and error. And she’s applying that clarity to her biggest role yet.
Wednesday’s Senior Year – and What Comes Next
Season 3 of Wednesday – expected later in 2027 – finds the character in her final year at Nevermore Academy. And for the first time, Wednesday is questioning everything.
“This season, especially because the kids are seniors in high school now, we’re dealing with more confrontational feelings regarding family and what it means to be an adult and what you see for your life,” Ortega says. “It’s not really until you get to the precipice of adulthood that you start to realize, Oh, God, well, maybe I’ve got to have a plan.”
It’s a theme that resonates deeply with Ortega herself. She’s been working since childhood, but the transition from young performer to leading lady has forced her to reckon with what she actually wants – not just what she’s been chasing.
The Tim Burton Connection
One constant has been her collaboration with Tim Burton, who directed the Wednesday pilot and has become a creative soulmate. Ortega says Burton is actually the person closest to Wednesday in spirit.
“Tim talked about it all the time,” she says. “He was like, ‘Well, she’s kind of… me.’ He’s much more shy than her. She’s much more obvious about the way that she feels.”
Through working with Burton on both Wednesday and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Ortega says she’s come to understand what Wednesday represents – and what she could still become.
The Iron Man 3 Memory That Changed Everything
Ortega’s first movie role was a tiny part in Iron Man 3 – the vice president’s disabled daughter, with no spoken lines. She was nine years old. She sat on her leg all day so it would appear missing, then limped to the car with tears streaming down her face – not from pain, but from pure joy.
Her family showed up to the local multiplex and hopped from theater to theater, catching her brief appearance on multiple screens, cheering each time.
“I actually don’t even think I was looking at the screen,” she recalls. “I was looking at the audience. I just thought, Ooh, this is bizarre. These people have seen my face now. It felt like a breaking of the fourth wall.”
That moment taught her what she truly loves about acting: not the fame, not the set, but the connection. Seeing others react. Making them feel something.
‘A Freak in a Different Way’
That hunger for connection is what drew her to The Great Beyond, Abrams’s mysterious new film. Ortega plays a “lost young person in a new city” who finds a friend in Glen Powell’s character. But there’s a twist.
“She’s very knowledgeable about one thing. This is her obsession. She’s quite manic the way that she loves this thing, and it takes over her whole personality,” Ortega teases. “So it was nice for me to play somebody who’s just obsessed with something like that. A freak in a different way.”
In many ways, that describes Ortega herself. Acting became her obsession early – before she hit double digits – and she never wavered, even when her parents laughed at her announcement at age seven.
“I never really stopped, because I’m very stubborn,” she says. “And then I never questioned it.”
What Comes Next?
As Ortega looks toward the future, she’s more intentional than ever. She’s learned that success isn’t just about saying yes – it’s about choosing the right stories, the right collaborators, and the right risks.
“Anytime anyone is just undeniably themselves, it’s quite magnetic,” she says – and she could be talking about herself.
Jenna Ortega won’t stop taking risks. Not because she has to, but because that’s the only way she knows how to live. And as Wednesday Addams would surely agree: playing it safe is overrated.
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