“Just happens to be what comes my way”: Jenna Ortega Claims Her One Career Streak is Far From “Intentional” After Supposedly Losing Dune Role to Zendaya

One of the budding actors of this generation, Jenna Ortega fits into the pop culture phenomenon easily due to her relevance in the box office industry. However, it is not through the ubiquitous comic book franchises like Marvel or DC that the starlet climbed the ladder to global recognition.

Like most fresh actors in the industry, including Paul Mescal, Jacob Elordi, and Timothée Chalamet, Ortega shares the credit for avoiding the superhero business and slipping into the mainstream business through arthouse roles that most closely fit her image. For the Wednesday star, the chosen field happens to be the horror genre.

Jenna Ortega Clears Up Her Role in Hollywood

Not many actors, experienced or otherwise, can proudly claim to have passed on a role that they later went on to regret. Even lesser actors are proud to admit that they lost the role of a lifetime to their contemporaries in the industry. Admitting this not only instantly diminishes their reputation as an actor but portrays them as less talented in comparison to the other.

However, Jenna Ortega holds no grudge as she slips from one role to the next, making them her own, and elevating them even further in today’s pop culture-obsessed world. And despite her impeccable ability to slip into eccentric roles, the industry has not always played in her favor.

Recent headlines in every major publication read about her audition as Chani in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune franchise. The role ultimately went to Zendaya, whose portrayal of the character has been received rather controversially. But Ortega clarifies whatever doubts or reservations that fans may have held in their minds about her missed potential in Dune with a statement about her career streak in the horror genre. In an interview with Elle, Ortega claims:

I don’t think I gravitate towards [the horror genre]. I feel like it gravitates towards me. I keep doing these horror movies but it’s not intentional. It just happens to be what comes my way. I guess I have a deep appreciation for the genre so I think, probably without realizing it, subconsciously, [when] I’m reading a script and I’m not interested in it, just [keep] waiting for gore.

Among her most recent work in the genre is the pitch-perfect embodiment of Wednesday Addams in Tim Burton’s recreation of The Addams Family for Netflix. The series, one of the most acclaimed and extensively watched new series in recent years, has solidified its role in pop culture with Jenna Ortega’s impeccable portrayal of Wednesday in all her idiosyncratic weirdness.

Jenna Ortega’s Legacy Goes Down an Eerie Path

Ever since Hollywood’s conception, things that go bump in the night have been a subject of great fascination in the industry. The horror genre was originally a pure product of unbridled terror that used the power of human imagination to its advantage. The old days believed in the tricks of light and shadow and sound to conjure up the most ghastly and nightmarish monsters imaginable to mankind.

However, the modern generation has grown reluctant to put so much effort into conjuring up their own villains when they could simply be treated to the delicacies of horror through the evolution of cinematic technology. As such franchises like Insidious, Evil Dead, and Conjuring fill up the horror schlock fest, feeding into the vein of fear through psychological and body horror.

Jenna Ortega follows a more refined and artsy path. The actor’s role in the Scream franchise shrugs off the eerie skeleton fingers scratching at the door or the nun peering at you from a darkened room’s corner. Her love for horror is examined through a tangible source and an entity who makes it his/her business to follow their prey around and make them be afraid of their very presence.

In that sense, Jenna Ortega keeps the nostalgia of old Hollywood alive while infusing it with the essence of modern-day horror. After all, there is nothing more terrifying to a girl in today’s world than a consistent and unhinged stalker hell-bent on seeing her dead, by whatever means necessary.

Scream (2022) is available for streaming on Paramount+