Even if you haven’t seen the record-breaking series Wednesday since it debuted on Netflix two weeks ago, chances are you’ve caught at least a glimpse of the fourth episode on social media. This is the episode where the title character dances to the 1981 song “Goo Goo Muck” by The Cramps.
On TikTok, the scene was also re-edited with actress Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday dancing to Lady Gaga’s 2011 banger “Bloody Mary.” (A faster version of the song works better to keep the beat in sync with Wednesday’s dance moves.)
While the dance scene has become a fan favorite of the series, it’s not without some controversy. It was revealed by Ortega herself that on the day they shot the scene, she was COVID-19 positive. To be clear, Ortega didn’t know she was positive when dancing. The production, however, knew she was feeling under the weather and decided to test her for the virus.
“Yeah, I woke up and – it’s weird, I never get sick, and when I do, it’s not very bad – I had the body aches,” Ortega said. “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. They gave me medicine between takes because we were waiting for the positive result.”
Once the positive result was confirmed, Ortega was sent home to recover. The fact that the production allowed Ortega to shoot the dance scene without waiting to see if she had COVID-19 first didn’t sit well with many people, especially since it’s evident from the scene that there were many people on the dance floor with her.
“Everything wrong with America’s reaction to COVID is encapsulated in people applauding Jenna Ortega for doing her Wednesday dance scene while she had COVID,” one Twitter user wrote. “She should have been masked and home.”
Another Twitter user said they were “Disappointed to learn that Jenna Ortega had COVID symptoms on the set but was still allowed to film the Wednesday dance scene while she waited for her positive test result. I wonder how many people got sick? And how many people those people got sick?”
What do you think about these reactions?