Jenna Ortega has been as busy as ever with the new season of Wednesday, coming soon with a Netflix subscription. In recent years, she’s grown to be quite the rising star, thanks to her role in the hit series as well as the Scream movies. Having grown up in the industry that's not something new to her. But the actress confessed what it’s actually like to work on a show like Wednesday, and it sounds grueling.
Working on Wednesday is no small feat. Ortega has previously opened up about how difficult it’s been to the point where she pulled her hair out. It doesn’t help that the hours are pretty tough. While appearing on the podcast Big Bro with Kid Cudi, Ortega looked back at her career and the hours she’s had to put in over the years, and it does not sound fun:
Because I started so young, and that was back when I had to do school and stuff at the same time, a good 12 hours of my day were planned out. Then, you get older. You’ve got 16 hours of the day planned. You wake up, you go to work, you film, you go home, look at your sides, do it again. Do it five or six days a week. There’s not really room for a life. Which again, lucky, but it is intensive work.
It sounds like Ortega barely has any time off, and when she does, she spends it preparing for the next work day. Even when she was younger and working on Disney’s Stuck in the Middle, her time was split between work and on-set school, which is a lot to put on a kid. Now that she’s older, she’s being worked even harder. While she certainly seems grateful to be in the position she’s in, it’s clear that it comes with challenges. As the actress continued:
It feels like sleepwalking. You’re so exhausted, and you’re so used to doing the same thing every day that you’re not really challenging yourself anymore. Fortunately, it’s a creative job, so you’re always finding inspiration in a scene or a new character or a premise.
Unfortunately, in this day and age, it’s easy to overwork yourself. Luckily, in Ortega’s case, she still seems to be finding the fun and entertainment in her job. Namely because she is doing what she wants to do. It’s just very intense. So intense that at times, she’s on a strict routine where she doesn’t even have to think about doing something because she’s so used to it. And this might be relatable for fans. In her words:
You forget. Every once in a while, you’re like washing your face before bed, and you look up like, ‘Who, you’re still there.’ Because I hadn’t thought about myself in so long.
It’s possible the longer that Ortega does Wednesday, the more she’s gotten used to the grueling hours, but that doesn’t mean it’s not terrible. Between the filming, rehearsing, learning the lines, wardrobe, and learning the dance moves, it can all add up to a lot of work. Hopefully, she’s been able to take some time off for herself, but at the very least, everyone working on the show is in the same boat as her. Maybe not as much because she is the lead, but it’s definitely worth it.
Meanwhile, Wednesday Season 3 was confirmed last year, so Ortega has been hard at work on it. As of now, a premiere date has not been revealed for the upcoming horror TV show, but it is expected to premiere sometime in 2027. Fans can prepare now by watching the first two seasons on Netflix.
