Jenna Ortega is one of Hollywood’s biggest new actors, but she said she misses being anonymous and loved the hustle of trying to make it.
Ortega rose to fame in 2022 as the lead character in the first season of “Wednesday,” Netflix’s second-most-watched TV season of all time. Last year, she cemented her Hollywood star status after appearing in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”
Next, Ortega will star alongside The Weeknd in “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” a psychological musical that is a side-project of his sixth and final album of the same name. The film is out in theatres on May 16th.
In an interview for V Magazine published on Monday, The Weeknd asked Ortega if she ever misses the anonymity she once had.
“Oh, most definitely,” she replied. She added she was grateful that “Wednesday” was a success, but she used to feel under “way less pressure.”
Jonathan Hession/Netflix
“I love the hustle,” Ortega said. “There’s something about the actor’s come-up and struggle that I really enjoyed. Sleeping in the cars, driving all around LA for auditions, and waiting for weeks, feeling sick to my stomach that I wasn’t going to get the job I really wanted. The adrenaline rush of it all was so exciting.”
Ortega added that her newfound fame has made her feel like she’s in a perpetual “loop of anxiety.”
“I hold so much more pressure and weight in my body than I ever did, and I think it’s just kind of the expectation of it all,” she said.
Follow the success of “Wednesday,” Ortega has been vocal about her struggles dealing with her newfound fame.
In 2023, five months after “Wednesday” premiered, Ortega described being famous as “really stressful” during a junket for “Scream VI,” which was shared by the Associated Press on TikTok.
“Anything that you say can be twisted in to this way or suddenly people are making assumptions about you or they’re over-sexualizing you,” Ortega said. “It’s just like a really scary place to be because you feel like you’re thrown to the wolves.”
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In an interview with Vanity Fair in 2024, she described her experience in the spotlight as “very dissociative and alien and out-of-body.”
“When people mention my name, it’s almost like my name has been taken from me. Now I just feel like I’m floating and…I’m up for interpretation,” she said.
Ortega will be back in the spotlight when “Wednesday” season two premieres in August.
