Why was Jenna Ortega ‘unhappy’ after ‘Wednesday’ success?

Jenna Ortega is opening up about the emotional weight that came with her rise to global fame following the success of Netflix’s Wednesday. 

In a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar, the actor shared how the massive popularity of the show left her feeling overwhelmed and misunderstood.

“To be quite frank, after the show and trying to figure everything out, I was an unhappy person,” Ortega admitted. “After the pressure, the attention — as somebody who’s quite introverted, that was so intense and so scary.”

The first season of Wednesday quickly became Netflix’s biggest English-language series of all time, racking up an astounding 252.1 million views — far ahead of Stranger Things 4, which stands at 140 million. 

Despite acting since childhood, Ortega’s sudden surge into the spotlight came with challenges she hadn’t faced before.

“I feel like being a bully is very popular right now,” she said. “Having been on the wrong side of the rumor mill was incredibly eye-opening.”

With public scrutiny came a sense of being restrained. Ortega said she felt the success of Wednesday was both a blessing and a limitation. 

“I’m doing a show I’m going to be doing for years where I play a schoolgirl. But I’m also a young woman,” she explained, noting the gap between her evolving identity and how the industry often perceives her.

“There’s just something about it that’s very patronizing. Also, when you’re short, people are already physically looking down on you… girls, if they don’t stay as this perfect image of how they were first introduced to you, then it’s ‘Ah, something’s wrong. She’s changed. She sold her soul.’ But you’re watching these women at the most pivotal times in their lives; they’re experimenting because that’s what you do,” she shared.

While grateful for what Wednesday brought her, Ortega knew she had to branch out quickly to avoid being typecast. 

She lined up a range of new projects — including Death of a Unicorn, Hurry Up Tomorrow with the Weeknd, Taika Waititi’s Klara and the Sun, and The Gallerist alongside Natalie Portman — to explore different kinds of roles and challenge herself creatively.

“I always want to make movies like that — things that make people happy and bring people together,” she said. 

“But with Netflix, I was like, ‘Okay, now we need to be thinking about other stuff.’ I can’t do movies like these forever.”

Despite the pressure, Ortega remains focused on striking a healthy balance between giving fans what they love and growing as an artist. 

“I want to be able to give back to them. But I also want to do things that are creatively fulfilling to me,” she explained. 

“So it’s finding that balance of doing movies that they might be interested in and then doing movies that I’m interested in. [I want roles that are] older and bolder and different. And then I want to be able to line up all of my girls and see something different in all of them.”