As the Writers Guild of America (WGA) continues to strike for increased salaries, residuals from streaming media, and other issues, some of its members are using comments recently made by Jenna Ortega about Wednesday as inspiration for their picket signs.
During an interview on Dax Shepard’s podcast Armchair Expert in March, Ortega received negative feedback from listeners for admitting to being “unprofessional” on the set of Wednesday by rewriting parts of the script she didn’t feel related well to her character.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had to put my foot down more on a set in a way that I had to on Wednesday,” Ortega said. “Everything that Wednesday does, everything I had to play, did not make sense for her character at all.”
Ortega added: “There were times on that set where I even became almost unprofessional in a sense where I just started changing lines.”
On the picket line, Ortega’s name was seen on some writers’ signs, including the one carried by House Party writer Brandon Cohen. His sign read, “Without writers, Jenna Ortega will have nothing to punch up!”
Others like Tell Me Lies creator and writer Meaghan Oppenheimer were wondering where Ortega was during the protests.
Other writers like Nick Adams (BoJack Horseman) and Karen Joseph Adcock (The Bear) tweeted their own comments about Ortega.
Cohen and others received criticism from people online who believed he was unfairly mocking Ortega.
While many people believed Cohen’s sign was a mean swipe at Ortega, he later revealed that he was trying to be “complimentary” to the actress. “She is one of us,” he responded to someone online who questioned his motivation for the sign.
Earlier this year, Wednesday was officially renewed by Netflix for a second season. So it’s even more important to support the writers who helped bring this story to life with fair wages and compensation. If not, we might have a Heroes season 2 situation where a writer’s strike led to major cuts in episode count and storylines, leading to the eventual downfall of what started as a great show.