Star of Wednesday Jenna Ortega admits that the movie Child’s Play used to haunt her dreams. Wednesday Addams, played by the actress in the Netflix remake of The Addams Family, made her debut on the streaming service on November 23. Wednesday is the most recent gothic entry in scream queen Ortega’s canon, and it follows a modernized version of the Addams’s daughter as she enters boarding school. Her previous credits include Insidious: Chapter 2, The Babysitter: Killer Queen, Scream, Studio 666, and X, and the Netflix drama You, season 2.
Ortega has a lengthy history with the horror genre, so it’s reasonable to believe that she enjoys the macabre just as much as her character, Wednesday. Ortega claims the polar opposite in a video for ELLE, where she also reveals that the first horror film she ever saw was Child’s Play and that she screamed the entire time. Fearing a killer doll as a child left her with reoccurring nightmares for years; she only remembers them ceasing around ten years ago when she was in her early adolescent years. Here’s what Ortega has to say about it:
“I think the first scary movie I watched or at least saw part of before I ran away in fear was Child’s Play, I wanna say. My older siblings and my Tio were watching, and I asked if I could watch the movie with them ‘cause I loved movies, and they said, ‘no, you’re gonna be too scared.’ They sent me to my room, and I remember peeking around the corner of my hallway to watch the film, and I literally only saw his hand. I screamed in terror ‘cause I knew he was this murderous doll, and then every year, I would have a nightmare about a hand up until I was about 15.”
As opposed to Wednesday, Ortega has a very different reaction to Chucky.
Since many viewers of the Netflix show think Ortega is perfect for a contemporary Wednesday, it’s interesti
ng to learn more about the actor and how she differs from her role. Whereas Ortega is haunted by images of Chucky’s hands, Wednesday is more likely to find the idea of a horror franchise amusing or fascinating. Even if Wednesday did like Chucky, she might find him infantile, foolish, or too light for her twisted tastes.
Throughout Wednesday, the protagonist develops her macabre tastes throughout her life. However, one scene reveals that she once had a scorpion as a pet when she was a little kid. A young Wednesday, therefore, would not have been touched by the scene that so horrified Ortega. The fact that Ortega learned cello and fencing and didn’t blink through most of her programming moments just to play Wednesday makes their divergent views to the genre seem trivial.
Ortega also mentions an ironic detail that the hands of Chucky’s dolls featured prominently in her repeated nightmares. So, while Wednesday was raised with Thing Addams, a severed and scarred hand, as a family pet, Ortega suffered from dreams about a hand for years. Ortega’s portrayal of Wednesday was spot-on because her dreams, like Wednesday’s visions, foreshadowed the hand’s significance and because Thing, played by Victor Dorobantu, was Wednesday’s main companion and frequent scene partner in the series. Wednesday’s dismembered hand is one of Ortega’s character’s most prominent allies and closest family members, so she can rest easy knowing that it isn’t anything like Chucky’s fake hands.
