‘Wednesday’: The scene where Jenna Ortega stopped blinking and hooked Tim Burton

Wednesday Addams is an iconic character wherever there is. However, the creators of ‘Wednesday’ have managed, together with the protagonist, Jenna Ortega, to create a new version that has nothing to envy to that of Christina Ricci, and which has all it takes to become the new classic representation of daughter of the Addamses. But what are the big changes of the new Wednesday? And how did they get to them?

Ortega sits in front of Teen Vogue and tells everything on camera the details behind the character’s recreation, which has earned him widespread critical praise, and which includes everything from a makeover to stopping blinking.

“During the first few weeks of shooting there was one take that I didn’t bat an eye on and Tim [Burton] She said ‘I don’t want you to blink again'”says the actress. “I didn’t even notice I wasn’t blinking, I was just passing by”. The moment they said ‘action’, Ortega “rebooted” his face. “To Tim [Burton] he really liked the ‘Kubrick’ look, where I look through my eyebrows”, To explain. This is the look of many of the most perverted characters Stanley Kubrick has captured on the big screen, such as the one played by Jack Nicholson in ‘The Shining’. In the case of Wednesday, enhances her piercing gaze and macabre doll lookso it is undoubtedly a success. “It’s a little intimidating”admits the actress.

After rehearsing a take in which she didn’t blink, Tim Burton was so enamored with the result that he told Jenna Ortega not to blink again during Wednesday’s replay. So he didn’t. pic.twitter.com/h5Ver9oozC

? netflix (@netflix) November 28, 2022

* “After taking a photo where I didn’t blink, Tim Burton was so enamored with the result that he told Jenna Ortega not to blink an eye when he played on Wednesday. So Jenna didn’t bat an eye.”

Beyond the look, Burton was clear he wanted to update the look, but they were particularly lost in the hair department. The iconic braids needed to be kept, but they couldn’t recall those of the previous Wednesdays, they needed a clear distinction. They tried all kinds of braids, until they wore fringes as bangs. It worked, but at the same time it didn’t work, as Ortega recounts, until he had the idea: “What if I cut my hair for real?”. And they loved it. Also, she admits that when something works for Burton, “gets excited like a child”.

As for her movements, the actress didn’t move her arms and legs more than necessary, and she even joked in the interview that her posture improved as she always had to walk straight. Her voice wasn’t that distorted, because she wanted to keep the idea that despite everything, she Wednesday is a person (cold and calculating and creepy, but a person nonetheless), so she just changed the tone and the way of pronouncing some words a bit to match the more formal and erudite way of speaking.

While filming, the movements made her feel “a silent film actress”something he had always wanted to be. “This really encouraged me to balance the surrealism and realism of the series”, he claims. Plus, she’s not afraid to confirm that she’s very similar in character to her: “They always compared me to Wednesday, because I’m very dry and people never know if I’m serious or sarcastic”. Maybe that’s one of the keys to making her role as Wednesday Addams so gorgeous, but we can’t forget all the hard work the team put in…and the impression she makes when she’s not batting an eye!

Great performance without flinching

As revealing and accurate as the idea of ​​not blinking on “Wednesday” was, This is by no means the first time the technique has been used on screen. In “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” director Edgar Wright urged the actors to do it avoid blinking so that they look as straight out of a comic as possible. In “AI Artificial Intelligence,” Haley Joel Osment played a robot boy, so blinking wasn’t an option. “The trick is not to think too much about it. After the first week, I didn’t even blink an eye when they yelled ‘Cut’ at the end of a scene”the actor tells TV Guide.

Anthony Hopkins himself blinked as little as possible in ‘The Silence of the Lambs’, because according to what he said in an interview, he was inspired by a meeting “quite scary” she had dated a mentally unstable man in London. Hopkins realized that the man didn’t blink and as a great actor he decided to use him in his interpretation of Hannibal Lecter. For his part, teacher Michael Caine took it to another level: He spent eight years of his life trying not to blink, as he believed he could do his own interpretation “more mesmerizing”. Eventually she decided to blink in her daily life, but not to blink again as the camera was rolling.