Never challenge actress Jenna Ortega to a staring contest. She’ll likely win based on all the practice she’s had not blinking as the title character in the Netflix series Wednesday.
According to Ortega, one of the requests that director Tim Burton made to her before production began was for her to try and avoid blinking.
“I feel like [Wednesday] was a bit more cartoony than characters that I’ve played before,” Ortega said during a recent interview with Galaxy Geeks. “I wanted something that she did to be different than the natural behavior that I do.”
Ortega adds: “I remember early on, [Tim] decided he didn’t want me to blink. So, I tried to blink as little as possible.”
According to Live Science, people blink to “lubricate the eyeballs.” It seems, however, that the eyeballs of Ortega’s Wednesday were never in need of that natural lubrication. If you don’t believe us, take a look.
Wednesday doesn’t blink when she’s being chased by a scary monster.
She doesn’t blink when she pops a balloon right in front of her face. How is that possible? Everyone flinches when a balloon pops.
She doesn’t even blink when she shows her best moves on the dance floor.
In a tweet last week, Ortega credited “Siouxsie Sioux, Bob Fosse’s Rich Man’s Frug, Lisa Loring, Lene Lovich, Denis Lavant, and archival footage of goths dancing in clubs in the 80s” for helping her create such a memorable dance sequence.
Recently, Ortega told Consequence TV, “The thing about the blinking is, I didn’t realize that I was doing it. It just kind of happened because every time we started a take, I would reset my face. I would drop all the muscles in my face, and Tim really liked the Kubrick stare, where I stare through my eyebrows. It’s just a bit intimidating.”
Now that Ortega referenced filmmaker Stanley Kubrick’s name, we’re wondering which of his characters inspired Ortega to not blink her eyes. Jack Nicholson from The Shining, perhaps?
