Jenna Ortega covers the Spring issue of The Cut, mostly to promote Death of a Unicorn. Jenna got launched into the celebrity stratosphere with the success of Wednesday, an adorable stand-alone series about Wednesday Addams. The second season is coming this year, after a three-year wait. In those three years, Jenna has been choosey about her projects, and DOAU is her first A24 film. Jenna has also exited the Scream franchise – in the first reboot of the franchise, she had a somewhat minor role, but because of the success of Wednesday, her role was increased in Scream VI. Now she and Melissa Barrera are totally out. She talks about that in The Cut.

Ortega doesn’t care for the term old soul: “It’s an easy way to get inside someone’s head,” she says — but she has a history of playing characters who outsmart their elders and a knack for bonding with colleagues old enough to play her parents.

Why she left ‘Scream VII’ days after Melissa Barrera was fired: “It had nothing to do with pay or scheduling,” says Ortega, despite initial reports to the contrary. By the time she’d decided to leave, she says, her Scream VI directors, Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, had already exited the film. “The Melissa stuff was happening, and it was all kind of falling apart. If Scream VII wasn’t going to be with that team of directors and those people I fell in love with, then it didn’t seem like the right move for me in my career at the time.”

Her career choices: “I’ve happened to join a lot of franchises, which is so great to be a part of legacy. But for me, I’m really trying to prioritize new directors and original stories. I know on the outside, maybe people are looking at my choices like, Man, what the hell is this girl doing? I never thought I would do a movie with unicorns. But an original script is exciting. If I can help get it made, I love to do that.”

Appealing to Gen Z: “Part of the reason why studios are freaking out is because nobody knows why things hit the way that they do, and you can never premeditate that, but there’s a sense of urgency for individuality.”

In 2023, she claimed that she rewrites ‘Wednesday’ scripts all the time: “I used my words really poorly. All I had to do was say ‘improvised.’ You live and you learn.”

She wants to write & direct too: “I think because there’s more eyes on me than I anticipated, I’m a bit more cautious about what I want to put out,” she says. She also has ambitions to compose scores for the screen, having already learned the cello for Wednesday. “That’s one of my first questions for directors: ‘Who’s composing this?’” says Ortega, who sometimes experiments with synths and an Omnichord at night to unwind. “Everything that I’ve learned I’ve learned out of wanting to educate myself on the history of the craft that I was committing my life to.”

[From The Cut]

I forgot about the “I rewrite my lines all the time” thing – Ortega was widely mocked during the writers strike too, there were “Jenna Ortega rewrote my sign” and “Without writers, Jenna Ortega will have nothing to punch up” signs. As for exiting the Scream franchise – honestly, the reboots were kind of awful, but I could totally see how Ortega watched as they fired Melissa and everything was in flux, and she just decided “you know what, I don’t need any part of this.” It’s true, she doesn’t.

Cover courtesy of The Cut, additional photos courtesy of Avalon Red.