Wednesday actress Jenna Ortega and The Great star Elle Fanning share their thoughts on female roles and Hollywood’s attempt to confine them within specific descriptions. For decades, women have played stereotypical roles befitting for their gender, but the rise of the “strong female lead” has changed the game forever.
The characteristics of a so-called badass woman in movies and TV shows often put them in certain situations where they are required to appear strong and level-headed all the time, suppressing emotions as much as possible as it is often regarded as a sign of weakness.
Elle Fanning And Jenna Ortega Bounce Off Thoughts On The Stereotypical Strong Female Lead
In a recent interview on Variety’s Actors on Actors, Maleficent star Elle Fanning discussed her aversion towards Hollywood’s obsession with badass women roles:
“I don’t know if you feel like this, but like when reading scripts, it’s like they love describing women as like badass, strong, and they’re always coming into a room, and they know everything, and it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s a strong woman.’ It’s like, I don’t wanna watch that. I’m not like that.”
Fanning added that she loves “complicated women” and wants to “play evil women” as these traits are what she attempted to bring into Catherine, her role in The Great series. Meanwhile, Jane the Virgin actress Jenna Ortega shared she wants relatable characters:
“When you’re constantly walking, and there’s cars blowing up in the background, and things like that, it’s cool, and it’s awesome, it looks beautiful, but I don’t know anything about her. So, it’s hard to develop some sort of admiration or connection with women when they’re written very two-dimensional and don’t really give you enough.”
Fanning extended her gratitude to Tony McNamara, the scriptwriter behind The Great, for making sure the audiences get to see the good and the bad:
“It’s like to be a strong woman you have to be this, to be… You know, it’s like, again, putting us into a box again. So, I think I’m very grateful for Tony’s writing of getting to kind of show the different sides.”
Their works on Hulu’s The Great and Netflix’s Wednesday not only helped Fanning and Ortega learn more about the art of acting but also liberated them from the stereotypical views of female characters.
Elle Fanning And Jenna Ortega Talk About Starting Young In Hollywood
Amid their one-on-one interview, Elle Fanning and Jenna Ortega discussed the time they were starting to carve their own path. Both actresses worked at an early age and carried the pressure of trying to make it big and finding their own niche:
“When you start acting young, you start to realize, ‘I want to have more agency.’ And the advice is always ‘Produce your own work.’ For a long time, I felt like, ‘Oh, gosh, I should listen to the adults.’ But when you think about it, we’ve been acting for a very long time, and we’ve been on a lot of sets. We’re allowed to have opinions. I’ve learned to assert myself.”
Ortega noted how the famed Netflix show broke her out of the shell. She noted how easy it is to become a puppet in the industry:
“Being a young woman in the industry, sometimes people don’t take you as seriously. I’ve had insane conversations with people where I stay in my place because I’m just an actor.”
The concept of strong female leads in Hollywood continues to evolve and, through the voices of actors such as Fanning and Ortega, brings challenges to Hollywood creators to be more perceptive when it comes to writing about women in films and television.
Catch The Great on Hulu and Wednesday on Netflix.
Source: Variety
