The one scene Jenna Ortega wanted everyone to ignore: “I was ...

Wed 18 September 2024 17:15, UK

Although it’s not inaccurate to say she’s had a rocket strapped to her back in recent years, it’s worth remembering that Jenna Ortega has been acting for over a decade, even if it’s enough to turn the hair grey in a certain generation realising somebody born in 2002 is heading straight to the top of the A-list.

As far as introductions to the big screen go, Ortega indicated that success lay in her immediate future right out of the gate. After debuting with a pair of guest spots on TV shows Rob and CSI: NY in 2012, the next year gave her a feature-length bow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Iron Man 3.

It was only a small role as the vice president’s daughter, but the movie still cleared $1.2 billion at the box office and left cinemas as the fifth highest-grossing release in history. Her next effort was the horror sequel Insidious: Chapter 2, which recouped its thrifty production costs 32 times over in ticket sales.

Ortega would hit the big time on her own merits soon after, taking a major supporting role in the second season of hit psychological thriller You, winning praise for her performance in school shooting drama The Fallout, becoming one of the new faces of the Scream franchise, sticking to horror with Ti West’s X, and playing the title character in the most-watched series to ever stream on Netflix.

The star might have dozens of credits under her belt already, but ask most folks to name a single specific scene from her back catalogue, and the overwhelming majority of them are nigh-on guaranteed to pick out the viral dance sequence from Wednesday episode, ‘Woe What a Night’.

Scenes that take on a life of their own and infiltrate the collective consciousness are difficult to predict and even harder to manufacture intentionally, but Ortega wasn’t overly thrilled at discovering the busting of some moves had taken over the conversation and refused to recede from the spotlight.

“When they were telling me, I was trying to seem uplifted about it, like, ‘Oh, wow!'” she told Sunday Times. “But mentally, in my head, I was hoping people wouldn’t pay so much attention to that part. It’s disorientating. I don’t think people are naturally designed to have that many eyes on them.”

There were plenty of eyes on Wednesday, more than any other in-house episodic production Netflix has ever made, in fact. Tim Burton’s Addams Family overhaul was a monster in every sense of the word, but Ortega would rather the biggest talking points revolved around the show as a whole and not one isolated moment where she danced like there’s no tomorrow and inadvertently launched a craze.

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