Jenna Ortega has received massive praise for her portrayal of Wednesday Addams in the hit Netflix series Wednesday. However, it wasn’t easy playing the character, and took quite a toll on Ortega.
Speaking at a Netflix-hosted Q&A panel this week, Ortega spoke about just how tough the filming of the show could be. Alongside the the “12-14 hour” days filming, Ortega also noted that having to wake up early to get on set early, as well as continue cello lessons on Zoom afterward, was a tough act to balance.
“It was show up to set two hours early, do that 12-14 hour day, then go home and then get on a Zoom and have whatever lesson that I had,” said Ortega (via Variety). “Or show up to my apartment, my cello teacher was already waiting for me,” Ortega said. “It was just constantly going, and if you could on a weekend, if we weren’t shooting the sixth day that week, it was ‘All right, well then, we’ll get your lessons in on that day.’”
Ortega would go on to say that things got so stressful that she often wouldn’t sleep, pulled her hair out, and would sometimes call her parents crying due to the stress.
“I did not get any sleep. I pulled my hair out,” Ortega revealed. “There’s so many FaceTime calls that my dad answered of me hysterically crying.”
While the role did lead to a ton of stress for Ortega, it also has become a role that catapulted the actress into superstardom. After becoming a smash hit for the streamer, Netflix announced that the series would be coming back for a second season last week.
The hit became Netflix’s second most popular English-language series with 1.237 billion hours viewed within its first 28 days.
