Looks like Wednesday is the busiest day of the week for Jenna Ortega. We already knew that being a Nevermore Academy student took up a lot of Ortega’s time — You showrunner Sera Gamble recently told IndieWire that Ortega was supposed to return for a fourth season until her role as Wednesday Addams got in the way. Now, per Variety, Ortega is opening up about how Wednesday’s filming schedule was so intense that she was often “hysterically crying” on the phone with her dad. In a Q&A panel hosted by Netflix, Ortega described showing up to set two hours early to work 12-hour to 14-hour days, then returning home to take lessons in ranging skills from fencing to cello. “It was just constantly going,” she recalled. “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 added that she started practicing fencing and cello several months before Wednesday’s eight-month shoot in Romania. She had to switch cello teachers abroad and learn to perform a piece written for two cellos with just one instrument. “I didn’t get any sleep. I pulled my hair out,” Ortega said. “There’s so many FaceTime calls that my dad answered of me hysterically crying.”
Ortega also took on the responsibility of choreographing the dance to “Goo Goo Muck” that launched a thousand TikToks. She has confirmed that she performed the dance on a day when she had COVID. “I felt like I’d been hit by a car and that a little goblin had been let loose in my throat and was scratching the walls of my esophagus,” Ortega previously told NME. “They were giving me medicine between takes because we were waiting on the positive result.” Timing was apparently so tight that she never got the chance to redo her viral moves without a viral infection. Here’s to hoping that Nevermore will have a less hectic schedule next semester.
