How Netflix's Wednesday Creators Feel About Jenna Ortega's Controversial Writer Comments

Back in the spring of 2023, "Wednesday" star Jenna Ortega said on a podcast that she personally rewrote some parts of the Netflix show's script that she didn't think quite worked. So, what do the show's creators think about that?

Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, who created the series for the streamer (yes, Tim Burton is the brand name associated with the show, but Gough and Millar actually brought their concept to him in the first place), were speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about their work on the Burton-Ortega collaboration "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" when the outlet brought up Ortega's comments. To be honest, both Gough and Millar handled it very professionally.

"That's hard," Gough admitted, adding that he and Millar have dealt with somewhat similar situations before. "We've done a few of these shows, like 'Smallville,' which was a big hit out of the gate. Suddenly, you have these young stars in the spotlight. They're going to misstep. They're going to say things. I think you just have to give them grace and know that it happens. It's never pleasant, but it just comes with the territory. I think we're at the point now where the internet's going to do what the internet's going to do. What you don't want to do is give these things oxygen."

The good news here is that clearly Alfred Gough and Miles Millar think very highly of Jenna Ortega; after all, they worked with her again on "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" and season 2 of "Wednesday" is forthcoming. In fact, in response to Gough's comment about their past experiences, Millar chimed in to say that they love working with Ortega and appreciate her immense talent.

"We work with Jenna very closely on the show," Millar noted. "We obviously worked with her on ['Beetlejuice Beetlejuice']. It's always an incredibly collaborative and joyful experience. We couldn't be prouder of her work and we've embraced her as a producer on the show this year. She is one of the hardest working, most talented young actresses in the business, and we are very lucky and feel very proud that she's working with us."

Basically, it seems like Millar thinks the whole thing got totally blown out of proportion, which is definitely possible (everyone on the Internet is, after all, constantly outraged over everything). "So it is what it is," he concluded. "A show of this size and this scale is always going to have people chattering. But it's not our reality or her reality."

So, what did Jenna Ortega actually say about the writing on "Wednesday" that got her into a little bit of trouble? During a 2023 appearance on "Armchair Expert" with hosts Dax Shepard and Monica Padman, Ortega bemoaned the fact that she felt as if her character, Wednesday Addams, frequently did and said things that were really out of character. "Everything that she does, everything that I had to play, did not make sense for her character at all," Ortega told Shepard and Padman. "Her being in a love triangle made no sense. There was a line about this dress that she has to wear for a school dance and she said, 'Oh, my God, I love it. Ugh, I can't believe I said that. I literally hate myself.'"

The real kicker, though, came when Ortega said that the writers would then come up to her and ask why certain scenes completely changed before filming. "They would be like, 'Wait, what happened to the scene?'" Ortega recalled on the podcast. "And I would have to go through and explain why I couldn't do certain things."

Recently, Ortega reflected on the comments during a wide-ranging profile in Vanity Fair for its September issue and admitted that she should have been a little more considerate with her phrasing. "I think I probably could have been .... I probably could have used my words better in describing all of that," she told interviewer Michelle Ruiz. "I think it was hard because I felt like had I represented the situation better, it probably would've been received better."

The bottom line is that Jenna Ortega is one of the biggest young stars working in the industry right now, and while her comments were definitely a bit ill-considered — especially when you remember that the 2023 writers' strike came shortly thereafter, which kept the aforementioned comments in the news for a while longer and made Ortega look like she didn't support her writers — she's doing just fine. The second season of "Wednesday," which added Steve Buscemi to its cast this spring, doesn't have a release date just yet, but Ortega is now a producer on the series (which, I would imagine, means she'll get more say over her character's exploits and she won't have to pick fights with any of the writers).

Besides that, Ortega's latest project "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" has drawn pretty solid reviews from critics and made a splash at the box office, and it's clear that her future is incredibly bright. Plus, the creative team behind both "Wednesday" and "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" were perfectly understanding about her little faux pas.

The first season of "Wednesday" is streaming on Netflix. "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" is currently playing in theaters.