Jenna Ortega has made a candid admission about how she felt after finding global fame following the success of Wednesday.
Wednesday, a spin off from cult classic The Addams Family, debuted on Netflix in November 2022 and it wasn't long until it became one of the streamer's most successful series.
Ortega stars as the lead of Wednesday Addams in the show and her portrayal of the moody, melancholy schoolgirl and will return to our screens as Wednesday later this year for the first part of the second season.
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While Ortega already had a handful of credits to her name before starring in Wednesday (such as You, The Fall Out, and Jane the Virgin, as well as her numerous Disney projects), it was the Netflix show that really propelled her into the spotlight.
But the fame has come with its downsides, with Ortega recently admitting that it made her 'unhappy'.
She shared with Harper's Bazaar: "To be quite frank, after the show and trying to figure everything out, I was an unhappy person. After the pressure, the attention — as somebody who’s quite introverted, that was so intense and so scary."
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As well as being shot into the public eye, there were aspects of her Wednesday role itself which seemed to get under Ortega's skin.
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She said: "I’m doing a show I’m going to be doing for years where I play a schoolgirl. But I’m also a young woman.
"You just don’t feel like you’re being taken seriously. You know, it’s like how you’re dressed in the schoolgirl costume. There’s just something about it that’s very patronizing."
Her newfound fame came a lot of scrutiny, said the 22-year-old, particularly on social media.
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"I feel like being a bully is very popular right now," Ortega said. "Having been on the wrong side of the rumor mill was incredibly eye-opening."
There was speculation in recent months that the Death of a Unicorn actress was dating Johnny Depp, who is nearly 40 years her senior.
Responding to this at the time, Ortega insisted that she didn't know Depp and hailed the rumor as one of the craziest things she'd heard about herself.
"Articles really do just make up their own quotes, but I thought that that was pretty hilarious," Ortega said to BuzzFeed.
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"I was on set with [co-star] Richard E. Grant and he came up to me and he just said 'Oh so you and Johnny,' and I laughed because I don't know that person," the actress added.
Elsewhere, a video of Ortega smoking went viral last year — which her own mom went on to respond to.
Taking to her Instagram Story, Natalie Ortega posted a series of pictures about the negative impact smoking has on your health.
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She concluded her flurry of posts with one that read: "A mother is always a mother. She never stops worrying about her children, even when they are all grown up and have children of their own."
Topics: Jenna Ortega, Netflix, Mental Health, Celebrity, Film and TV
Niamh Shackleton