Jenna Ortega
"I'm definitely the actress they always associate with, 'More Blood.'" Jenna Ortega says: "If I'm going to contribute my grain of sand in a project or scene, I want it to be as crimson as possible." Gore and horror films always fascinated him. She wanted to start acting at age 6, because she saw a movie that scared her. It stands to reason, then, that the Scream 6 star has become the queen of screaming for Generation Z.
However, this morning is the day after Friday the 13th and there is no blood. Ortega and I are flipping through boxes of rock records at Superior Elevation, a vintage music store located in Brooklyn. Outside, the streets are covered with snow. Inside the premises, the decoration is artistic and minimalist. It's full of trunks of music – good, bad, old... Very old- lined up in three rows of tables and there is plenty of floor space.
Ortega lives in California and doesn't come to Brooklyn very often (he traveled to New York for the ELLE photo shoot). A few days earlier, he presented the award for Best Original Song at the Golden Globes and states that music is his preferred language. "I listen to absolutely everything. I know anyone says that, but the truth is, sometimes I hear songs that aren't even good, just because I need to understand them."
On the labor front, Jenna plays the lead role in the horror comedy Wednesday, the Addams Family spin-off, directed and produced by Tim Burton, which quickly became the second most popular English-language series on Netflix. "You have to be nice to play Wednesday, and Jenna is known for being like that," Burton says. "Whether you like it or not, he's nice as a person and from the depths of his soul." (About a month after the series premiered, a fan unsuccessfully tattooed the actress. Instead of looking like Wednesday, the tattoo looked more like Samuel L. Jackson: it had fuzzy shadows, a wrinkled nose with a frown, and a forehead was the size of the United States. That tattoo went viral. "Oh my God," Ortega exclaims when I ask if he saw him. "I almost put it as a profile picture.")
"Maybe I'm too obsessed with my job, but the idea of having a relationship stresses me out."
In March, she reprised her role as Tara Carpenter in Scream 6. The actress, who became known in Hollywood as "young Jane" for her role in Jane the Virgin back in 2014, now has more than 39 million followers on Instagram. From that performance to Stuck in the Middle (on Disney Channel) he was constantly working at an almost frenetic pace. She likes to do it that way: "The process between 'action' and 'cutting' is the only reason I love my job. It's as if I surrendered to those two directives," she says.
At the start of filming for the movie Scream 5, which was released last year, Ortega's character was stabbed seven times in his home, attacked again in the hospital where he was recovering, and finally cornered in his friend's home. "An hour into the first day of shooting, we all looked at each other and said, 'Oh, she's great. We're not taking advantage of it enough,'" recalls Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, one of the directors. "In the last installment, instead, I was screaming and crying the whole time," she says seriously. "This time, I had to create a personality for my character. I had to decide: how should she dress, an actress who really keeps her feet on the ground," adds executive producer Chad Villella.
Ortega managed to overcome the nerves to join this iconic saga of satirical horror films. "I have so much respect for the franchise that I didn't want to do it wrong," he says. "I wanted to do justice and not defraud anyone." In this film, for the first time, Neve Campbell does not play his role as Sidney Prescott. Campbell walked away, he told Variety, because of a salary negotiation that belittled his contribution as a star of the saga for 25 years. "It was really unfortunate," Jenna says of Campbell's absence, "especially because Neve is the coolest, sweetest, most talented woman. The franchise wouldn't be what it is without it." The actress is naturally introverted. During the two hours we talk and flip through records, in a totally empty store, he keeps his coat on and his handbag under his arm, and speaks softly. He has a small circle of friends, some co-stars and crew members. She knows exactly how to act in front of the camera, but for all the show-off that her profession entails, such as red carpets, promotions and events, she is less confident. "If I really want to make movies and play characters, or if I want to direct and write soundtracks, I could do it in my backyard. I don't have the need to do it on a large scale," he says. What pushes her forward is the opportunity to work with the best. "All the secondary issues that come with my profession are hardly worth it. I don't want to feel like a traveling billboard. That's really scary, because it leads you to have less control over your life. I saw a lot of people and I know several people who succumbed to that pressure. I don't want to belong to anything, or anyone."
In his spare time in Montreal, while filming Scream 6, he would go for a run or walk in the parks: "Sometimes I rotted from being in bed so much. So, some days I would go out. It was good for me to be surrounded by friends. They encouraged me to make plans." Jenna enjoys visiting vintage shops, music venues and bookstores, but also places that are not very curious, where she can feel anonymous and just observe. "When I pass someone on the street, it's a bit annoying because I feel like I'm infected. My work has generated a virus that allows me to detect the movements and gestures that everyone makes." The way someone walks or talks can be taken by her to play a character. His Wednesday co-star Gwendoline Christie discovered Ortega's keen eye. "She has a curious nature," Christie says. "It's a paradox in his character, because he takes life very seriously, but he also appreciates everything absurd and has great imaginary power."
"Some month this year, I want to kick the board and take it off."
Although she grew up in California's Coachella Valley (she is the fourth child in a family of six), Ortega never had a connection to Hollywood. His mother is a nurse at a hospital and his father, a former sheriff, works in the California district attorney's office. "It incarcerates child abusers and all that," he says. She wanted to be an actress after seeing the thriller Man on Fire, starring Denzel Washington, marked by the outstanding performance of a young Dakota Fanning. Fanning's performance was so believable that Ortega had nightmares at night. That film piqued her curiosity: how had Dakota managed to scare and inspire her in equal measure? "I was happy watching and analyzing that film over and over again. I couldn't understand how someone so young could do anything that horrified me fiercely. But I also loved the way it made me feel," she says. "That's when I realized that I was really passionate about acting."
When she told her mom she wanted to be an actress, she laughed, only because two weeks earlier her daughter had confessed to her that she was in love with Barack Obama and wanted to become the first female president. "I had times when I was fanatical about certain things," he recalls. (Though some slipped away, "to this day I'm still obsessed with Obama.") Jenna says her parents' care when she started working in the industry was "very strict" and "very, very paranoid." His mom had watched a show about Macaulay Culkin's life and the toxicity he experienced in the Hollywood world as a child, so he went into "panic mode." So he tried to dissuade her from engaging in other activities, such as playing football and going to school. But after "three or four years of pleading," Ortega, who admits to being very stubborn, convinced her mother to post a monologue of her on Facebook. "Someone saw him and proposed that he sign with an agency," he says. "And my mom agreed, because she thought if I didn't, I could use it against her for the rest of my life." In this way, he began taking her to auditions in Los Angeles, sometimes driving for six hours, back and forth. Ortega was happy to work in what he liked, but he also felt the tension in his family. "It was very hard to follow that rhythm four or five days a week, and continue to raise your other children. It was absurd," he says. "My family made a lot of sacrifices." Therefore, the road to build his career was exciting and, at the same time, daunting. "I blamed myself when a project or audition didn't work," she says. "I felt like I had wasted time and money that we didn't have for my whole family."
In the casting for Jane the Virgin she mixed a few words in the few lines she had to say. "Luckily, I look like Gina Rodriguez, because I don't think I did anything overwhelmingly special in that audition," she says. Since then, he began to live in two worlds. He worked in Los Angeles in the mornings and then went back to school in the desert with his friends. When he starred in Stuck in the Middle, for three years, he set out to work hard. "I dreamed so much about belonging to this industry that I was willing to do everything to achieve something great." She began to be much more outgoing than she usually is in her everyday life, because it was her first important job. "I promised myself to do anything. I felt I had to commit as much as possible." Part of that goal can be seen on screen today. In fact, dabbling in the horror genre helped her break out of the mold in which all children who act under the Disney label are pigeonholed. She was willing to jump that trampoline. But now he is aware that he wants to go beyond horror. "Sometimes I feel conflicted with what I'm interested in or passionate about, because there's a part of me that always feels like the girl who lives in the Coachella Valley," she says.
When he started acting, he would have done anything to keep up with the pace of work. After a decade of building a successful career, he is in a great moment: in demand, on everyone's lips and with many followers. You can choose projects based on what you want. As she confesses, she no longer has to settle for "being the girl who carries the flag of Puerto Rico on her shoulder to make her all her personality" (she has Puerto Rican and Mexican roots). He has a starring role in the thriller Finestkind, directed by Brian Helgeland (coincidentally, Helgeland also co-wrote Man on Fire). "On set, I would describe her as a naval commander. When it's his turn to enter the scene, he surrenders and manages to do everything in two takes," says Helgeland. "It's like a knife thrower at a carnival. You can tell him, 'A little to your left or a little to your right,' but you could never tell him how to throw the knife, because he knows how to do it." Ortega also produced and starred in his first romantic film, Winter Spring Summer or Fall (still no release date), although he does not like romantic comedies. "I hate being in gaga mode with a guy," she says. "Being like this makes me proud. There is a problem with many female characters, who are designed in terms of men. That is, what they express or what they feel is always linked to a boy's story." That's something that doesn't happen to her, that she's currently not dating anyone. "Maybe I'm too obsessed with my work, but the idea of having a relationship stresses me out," she explains. "Also, being vulnerable with someone and having to get to know them, or trying to understand me for who I really am..." There is a silence. "My head isn't needing that right now."
Now, however, he is going through the typical anxieties that are experienced in his 20s. "I'm so afraid of disappointing the people in my life and even the public," he says. "I want to live up to everyone's expectations, it's something I need to work on. At the same time, I'm afraid that, I don't know, maybe someone knows me too well and realizes that I'm not what they imagine." That's why, when people congratulate her, she feels disbelief: "The kind words they say about me are incredible, but at times I think people see me in a way that I don't." He finds those compliments encouraging, as he realizes the strength of his own voice. For now, he is preparing for the second season of Wednesday. Her dream as a child was to work non-stop. Currently, he is taking some time to relax. "Some month this year, I want to kick the board and take it off. I'd like to travel and be hidden for a while," she says cheerfully. "I have to coordinate my schedule to make that really happen. At one point it stresses me out, because I think, 'Oh my God, am I going to be able to tell such a director that I won't be available to work with him during those weeks? Will I be able to do it?' I don't know yet, but I also want to start imposing my own rules."
Interview: Hunter Harris. Photos: Felix Cooper. Styling: Patti Wilson.