A top Hollywood producer has slammed Wednesday star Jenna Ortega for being entitled and toxic after she spoke out about her “unprofessional” actions during filming.
Speaking to Dax Shepherd on the Armchair Expert podcast, the 20-year-old actress revealed the challenges she previously faced during the shooting of the hit Netflix series Wednesday.
“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. Everything that Wednesday does, everything I had to play, did not make sense for her character at all,” she said, seemingly showing her discontent with what the producers of the show had in store for her character.
“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.’”
Ortega also admitted to changing the script and making up her own lines to replace the parts she didn’t like.
“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 continued.
After her candid interview, Ortega was slammed by the series’ showrunner Steven DeKnight who implied that the actress is too young to be setting rules and be difficult and entitled on the set.
“I love talking with actors about their lines/stories. But by the nature of the beast, they don’t have the full picture (in TV) of where the story is going and why some lines are needed for the whole to make sense,” he explained.
“She’s young, so maybe she doesn’t know any better (but she should). She should also ask herself how she would feel if the showrunners gave an interview and talked about how difficult she was and refused to perform the material.”
The producer, who previously worked on the likes of Daredevil and Uprising, added: “This kind of statement is beyond entitled and toxic. I love her work, but life’s too short to deal with people like this in the business.”
After his statement went viral, DeKnight faced some backlash from Ortega’s fans who thought he was in the wrong for blasting the actress for speaking out.
Doubling down on his comments, the producer elaborated: “My comments were about breaking the trust that we all have on set and during the production process that our creative differences will stay in the family. It was never about her creative concerns, which were valid.
He added: “Again, I can’t stress this enough: She’s an amazing talent. It was just an unfortunate situation to expose creative differences publicly, and also I’ll admit that writers are on edge because of the impending strike, myself included. A perfect storm.”
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