Even the professionals speak of Jenna in awe. In an interview held before the start of the SAG-AFTRA strike, Wednesday co-creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar spoke with TheWrap about the shocking success of the TV series, and in the process heaped enormous praise on Jenna.
The show broke Netflix viewing records. By the third week of release, it became the second most-watched English-language Netflix series ever. Countless fans on TikTok replicated Jenna’s Rave’N dance moves, and Wednesday-related memes spread across Twitter.
“It’s been kind of shocking,” Gough said. “We were very proud of the show, but you never know how people are going to react to it. So many people have reacted so positively, and it’s brought so many emails and texts from people from all eras of our career saying how much they enjoyed it. My parents, who are 80, were getting texts from their friends saying it’s the first show they’ve watched with their grandkids. It’s kind of incredible.”
The pair talked of the challenges of finding the right actress to play Wednesday:
“You’re dealing with an iconic character and you’re putting it in a way that’s never been done before,” Gough said. “We had a million discussions with Tim [Burton] before the casting because we were like, ‘If we don’t get the right Wednesday, we’re all screwed.’ Once we got Jenna on board, it was a million discussions with her. We all wanted to do the character justice and make it great. And look, I think the response has been fantastic. She’s now the iconic Wednesday.”
Jenna and Tim Burton are back for Beetlejuice 2 and so are Millar and Gough. Gough said that during a recent cast read-through, Ortega was “fantastic” adding, “Those kind of people come along once in a generation.”
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