‘Wednesday’ star Jenna Ortega admits changing scripts on series without writers knowing

Netflix Wednesday famed actress Jenna Ortega admitted that she changed the script of the series without letting the writers know. 

Ortega, 20, who is the face of the streamer’s second biggest English-language series of all time, Wednesday, revealed on a recent episode of the Armchair Expert podcast that most of the original scripts made no sense to her from a character's point of view.

So, she went ahead and sometimes changed dialogues without informing the writers.

"When I read the entire series, I realized, ‘Oh, this is for younger audiences,'" Ortega said. 

She went further saying, “when I first signed onto the show, I didn’t have all the scripts. I thought it was going to be a lot darker. It wasn’t… I didn’t know what the tone was, or what the score would sound like."

"I don’t think I’ve ever had to put my foot down more on a set in a way that I had to on ‘Wednesday,'" she continued. "Everything that Wednesday does, everything I had to play, did not make sense for her character at all. Her being in a love triangle? It made no sense. There was a line about a dress she has to wear for a school dance and she says, ‘Oh my god I love it. Ugh, I can’t believe I said that."

"I literally hate myself.’ I had to go, ‘No.’ There were times on that set where I even became almost unprofessional in a sense where I just started changing lines. The script supervisor thought I was going with something and then I had to sit down with the writers, and they’d be like, ‘Wait, what happened to the scene?’ And I’d have to go and explain why I couldn’t go do certain things" she added.

The You series Ellie actor clearly did not want to play the Wednesday Addams who lacked growth and was constantly monotonous, morbid and droll. 

According to her, that approach wasn’t going to work for a teenager.

"I grew very, very protective of her,” Ortega said. “You can’t lead a story and have no emotional arc because then it’s boring and nobody likes you. When you are little and say very morbid, offensive stuff, it’s funny and endearing. But then you become a teenager and it’s nasty and you know it. There’s less of an excuse."