Without her, “Wednesday” would be a tired Monday: Jenna Ortega is the marvel of Netflix

“I’ll do that for you, grandfather,” says the 14-year-old, looking up to the sky, where her grandfather disappeared before she was born. He died of AIDS. The 14-year-old is an actress, her name is Jenna Ortega and she is involved in the fight against AIDS. And for better opportunities for Latin American actresses and actors. Her father is of Mexican descent and her mother is of Mexican-Puerto-Rican descent.

Jenna wants more interesting roles at 14. Even though she has had a lot to do from an early age, the offer is limited for her. She’s the cute Latina girl in the McDonald’s ads, where she has to keep promoting apple turnovers even though she hates them, much to her chagrin. After the shoot, she always devours a portion of chicken nuggets to get rid of the stupid apples. “I had no connection with Hollywood, so it was said that I could only advertise,” she says.

She is the cute latina girl from Disney. “If my family were a week, I’d be Wednesday,” she says in the trailer for the sitcom “Stuck in the Middle.” So Wednesday. But Jenna is impatient. And insanely mature in their combative arguments.

“Even when I was eight, people called me an old woman,” she says today, just shy of 20. As a child in the TV business, she was surrounded by adults she interacted with in a professional way, “by the other children would be overwhelmed.” And perhaps that is precisely the paradox of child stars: they cannot be a child among many, but they play a child to many. They are excluded from a normal childhood.

Like the kids with strange abilities, the “Outcasts,” in Tim Burton’s Netflix hit “Wednesday,” are excluded from normality. Crammed into a boarding school for psychics. And among them Wednesday Addams. The precocious, dark, cynical, sadistic Latina girl. The monster daughter of Gomez and Morticia, who is alien to all things childish. Who doesn’t like colors or feelings. “Wednesday” is Jenna’s breakthrough, she is now a Netflix icon. Only “Squid Game” and “Stranger Things” are ahead of “Wednesday” on Netflix in the days leading up to Christmas, and both have been running for much, much longer.

The dark is one of Jenna’s favorite elements. It started early when her mom drove her from the Coachella Valley to Los Angeles for auditions, three hours there, three back, four, five times a week, and the mom had five other kids and a full-time job as a nurse at a time emergency station. During the ride, the two listened to homicide podcasts. The screams of the victims and the descriptions of the crimes were Jenna’s soundtrack on her way to the casting.

She has acted in horror films for a few years. Although she is allergic to fake blood. She just finished filming the new “Scream”, she loves working on horror, it’s “so therapeutic”, she says on the “Tonight Show”, it’s endless fun, no one can take themselves seriously at work, and all the tinkerers who dream of the gruesome effects are a bunch of sweet nerds. Tim Burton also includes her, she describes him as a “tiny creature” (in Jimmy Kimmel), as a tiny being, which is funny of course, because with 1.55 meters she is not a giant either.

She is therefore exactly as tall as her predecessor as Wednesday, Christina Ricci, to the nearest centimetre. And this is where Jenna Ortega’s perfectionism comes in. She’d let herself be cast for “Wednesday” quite unconcernedly, saying to herself, well, it’s just TV anyway, everything is shot way too fast, no one cares much when she suddenly saw Tim Burton. And Christina Ricci. Two people whose work she admired and whom she did not want to disappoint under any circumstances.

Her Wednesday now had to be many things: a declaration of love to Christina Ricci, a new interpretation, a masterpiece of comedic timing and precisely captured mimicry minimalism. And of course she had to scrape together her dark fabrics. Every smile freezes and her eyes turn into magical black magnets. She learned to play the cello and fence, and when it came to the famous dance scene (in which she suffered from a tested but unconfirmed Covid infection), she said big, “I do the choreography myself.”

Tim Burton left her alone with that. She didn’t sleep for two nights and watched dozens of videos: Goth Kids in ’80s clubs, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nina Hagen and Lisa Loring, who played the first Wednesday Addams in the ’60s. Then she went to the shoot and started dancing. No exact idea, but totally inspired. The result is a gem, Jenna’s cool twist reminds me of the dancing Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction. Lady Gaga already imitated her on TikTok.

“Wednesday” is another Harry Potter-esque series about a boarding school for supernatural children on Netflix, following “The Umbrella Academy” and “Chiling Adventures of Sabrina”. Thankfully, Tim Burton got to incorporate his whimsical angularity and morbid gravedigger aesthetic. And pleasurable shenanigans like Catherine Zeta-Jones’ voluptuous Morticia are a delight.

But above all, “Wednesday” is Jenna Ortega’s work and triumph. A woman who started in Hollywood with no relationships and certainly doesn’t need it today. Hollywood must now strive for the best relationship with Jenna Ortega.