Wednesday star Jenna Ortega revealed that work has just started on the second season of the Netflix series. The streaming platform announced in January that the breakout hit would be back for a second series. Jenna, who was promoting her new film Scream VI and her Saturday Night Live episode as host, spoke about what to expect from the upcoming season. She teased that the show will up its horror aspect and let the main character of Wednesday Addams be more of an individual going forward. (Also read: Jenna Ortega tries to avoid doing the Wednesday dance in SNL promo. Watch)
The supernatural series, which premiered in November 2022, has become the second most popular English-language series with more than 400 million hours in one week. The spin-off series about the Addams family has also crossed 1.02 billion total hours viewed in just three weeks since its debut, with over 150 million households streaming the show. Wednesday is created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar as it follows her adventures as a student at the supernatural boarding school Nevermore Academy.
Appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Jenna shared, “I think we just started getting a writers room together and kind of talking about it and everyone’s been really cool. I think we want to up the horror aspect of it a little bit and get Wednesday out of the romantic situation and just let her be her own individual and fight her own crime.”
The young actor’s comments on the show came after Jenna revealed that she had to change the script a few times during filming on season one. On the Armchair Expert podcast, the 20-year-old had said, “I don’t think I’ve ever had to put my foot down more on a set in a way that I had to on Wednesday. Everything that [Wednesday] does, everything that I had to play, does not make sense for her character at all. Her being in a love triangle made no sense.”
Jenna also stated that she grew very protective of her character and said, “You can’t lead a story and have no emotional arc.” The series also stars Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán as Wednesday’s parents Morticia and Gomez, respectively. The rest of the season one cast included Gwendoline Christie, Hunter Doohan, Percy Hynes White, Emma Myers, Fred Armisen and Christina Ricci.