Who Is Jenna Ortega? All You Need To Know About Netflix's Wednesday Star

Netflix earlier on Wednesday released the trailer of Wednesday, a new Tim Burton-produced Addams Family spinoff series. The series focuses on the titular character, played by actor  Jenna Ortega. The series also features Catherine Zeta-Jones as matriarch Morticia Addams, and Luis Guzman, who plays her husband, Gomez Addams.

In the two-minute teaser for Wednesday, the raven-haired teen (played by Ortega) attempts to adjust to her new school, Nevermore, the very same one her parents went to. “Little did I know I’d be stepping into a nightmare — full of mystery, mayhem and murder,” Ortega’s Wednesday says, amid a confetti-filled montage that ends in blood. “I think I’m going to love it here.”

Co-showrunner Miles Millar previously said that the series was not going to be a reboot or a remake of The Addams Family, but its “own thing” and hopefully one that would play like “an eight-hour Tim Burton movie.”

Burton serves as both director and executive producer on the eight-episode series, slated to debut on Netflix this fall.

Who Is Jenna Ortega?

Jenna Ortega began her career as a child actor, gaining recognition for her role as young Jane on The CW comedy-drama series Jane the Virgin (2014–2019). She also had some guest appearances on television shows like CSI: NY and films like Iron Man 3,  Insidious: Chapter 2.

Ortega received more attention for two prominent roles on the Disney Channel. One was her starring role as Harley Diaz in the series Stuck in the Middle (2016-2018), while the other was for voicing Princess Isabel on the animated series Elena of Avalor (2016-2020).

Ortega is no stranger to Netflix having starred in films The Babysitter: Killer Queen (2020) and Yes Day (2021). She has starred as Ellie Alves in the thriller series You on the streaming service since 2018. She appeared in the horror films Studio 666 and X (both 2022) and played Tara Carpenter in the slasher-blockbuster feature Scream (2022), which won her the MTV Movie Award for Most Frightened Performance. She voices Brooklyn on the Netflix animated series Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous (2020–2022).

The California-born Ortega in a 2016 PopSugar essay described herself as 75 percent Mexican and 25 percent Puerto Rican. She also spoke about inclusivity in Hollywood in her essay.

"As a Latina, there are not as many roles out there for me. When I first started out, it was hard. I was constantly shut down because I did not have the look they were going for. You have to keep pushing. All of the no's I received just motivated me even more," she said in PopSugar.

Suggested Reading: Wednesday Addams Returns In New Netflix Series By Tim Burton