“I wish they got a little more recognition,” Ortega said of the on-screen teenagers.
Jenna Ortega is convinced that Gen Zers are woefully underserved on screen.
The “Wednesday” star hit back at stereotypes about teenagers in movies and TV shows, and broke down the assumptions behind certain labels that teens are inherently “intelligent.”
“I think because I look a little younger, I’ve been acting for a little over a decade, so I was a teenager in the stories,” Ortega said on the “Hot Ones” YouTube series. . “I feel like it’s always the ‘teen with tires’, the ‘teen with a bad mouth’ or often the ‘intelligent’, which I don’t think is true.
The ‘Scream VI’ actress continued: ‘I think it’s hard too, these days with all this new lingo coming out, but I feel like my generation because there’s so much available to them online, they just have more opportunities to learn. I wish they would get a little more credit. We can be clever sometimes.”
Ortega previously noted the need for younger creatives to take over, especially when it comes to authentically writing youthful roles on screen.
“I really see my younger generation taking more control of themselves in the industry — whether it’s learning to write sooner, directing sooner or producing sooner,” Ortega told Who What Wear in October 2022. “I think it’s really empowering and important because right now teenage voices are still being spoken by older white men.”
The ‘X’ star continued: “The more it happens, the more we recognize that girls are so much more than a lame stereotype.”
In particular, Ortega praised Netflix’s “You” for particularly “empowering” her in Season 2 as Joe Goldberg’s (Penn Badgley) confidant Ellie.
“They heard my voice and it was really empowering for me because I’ve been on sets where, as a young woman of color, I don’t always have a say in what my character is doing or what’s happening on screen, but she was very involved on set and that’s really nice. was,” Ortega said Teen Vogue then. “I love when it can be a collaboration (where) everyone works, not just one person. It was very liberating as an artist.”
Ortega was supposed to reprise his role in season 4 of the thriller series, but the “Wednesday” production got in the way. The star admitted he was “devastated” not being able to shoot both projects at the same time, but hinted that he might return for season 5.
(embed)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGuC6wunr-I(/embed)
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