Jenna Ortega's Transformation From Disney Channel Star To Scream Queen

Jenna Ortega had quite a successful year in 2022. In addition to starring in two horror hits (the fifth installment of the "Scream" series and Ti West's slasher "X"), the actress cemented her leading actor status as a Golden Globe nominee for her nuanced performance as the iconic titular character in the Netflix show, "Wednesday," after already having racked up an impressive resume spanning nearly a decade at just 20 years old.

Prior to 2022, Ortega began her professional career as a child actor playing a younger version of the title character in The CW's comedy series, "Jane the Virgin" and starring in the Disney Channel series, "Stuck in the Middle," as Harley Diaz. She later made appearances in the psychological-thriller series, "You," the family film, "Yes Day," with Jennifer Garner, and McG's 2020 follow-up, "The Babysitter: Killer Queen," before earning critical acclaim for her leading performance in the 2021 drama film, "The Fallout."

With the upcoming "Scream 6" on the horizon and "Wednesday" having been renewed for a second season, here's a look at the actress' remarkable journey from being a Disney Channel star as a child, participating in philanthropy and activism through her teenage years, endorsing a makeup brand, publishing her first book as an author, and becoming a household name in Hollywood in the past decade.

Discovering her aspiration as an actor was not enough for Ortega, as she also had to convince her mother, Natalie, that she would do okay in that profession. Ortega talked with Latina Magazine about how she was discovered with the help of the internet, "I started begging my mom to let me act when I was 6 years old. She pretty much ignored me because she thought it was just a phase. Two years later, when I still wanted to do it, she started taking it more seriously. Facebook helped me get my first agent. My mom posted a video of me doing a dramatic monologue and a friend of hers from high school forwarded it to an agent. Three months later, I got my first audition and the rest is history!"

When Tamron Hall asked Ortega in 2021 about whether she remembered her mother telling her she was going to upload the video online, Ortega answered, "No, I didn't, because she [Natalie] didn't mean anything by it. It was kind of a joke. I remember at the time, she didn't want me to be an actor ... she just wasn't sure about putting me in that environment, in this industry that she had heard such terrible things about ... she posted it just as a joke for inside friends because her friends on Facebook knew that I was very dramatic."

After playing a few supporting roles in shows like "Rake," "Jane the Virgin," and "Richie Rich," Ortega finally got her big break as Harley Diaz in "Stuck in the Middle," a Disney Channel sitcom that aired for three seasons between 2016 — 2018. As you might have guessed from the show's title, Harley is a fourth-wall-breaking aspiring engineer who is stuck as the middle child among seven kids. It was relatively easier for Ortega to slip into the shoes of the character, since she herself is a middle child with five siblings, and could draw from her own personal experiences when portraying the character.

The actress told Latina Magazine, "Playing Harley Diaz is awesome because I relate to her a lot. It is like I am playing myself! We both are middle children in a big family, we both can be goofballs, we both love our families and we both love math and science." The similarities also enabled Ortega to contribute ideas to the scripts of each episode of the show, as she would illustrate to the writing team how her own family would deal with particular situations in their home, which in turn informed how the show's fictional Diaz family would deal with the everyday chaos (via Mama's Mission).

When the parents of 5-year-old Riley Rose Sherman received a hefty $300,000 hospital bill simply for Riley to get diagnosed with a rare type of cancer that affects children, and their insurance wouldn't cover the expense, they had to turn to crowdfund events to raise the money. One of these events included a meet and greet held by Ortega in December 2016, who was motivated to help out the Sherman family after a friend of hers, Desirae "Desi" Cechin, lost her life to the same cancer (Neuroblastoma) at the age of 6. 

Ortega, then 14, said during the event, "I loved Desi. She was so kind and so sweet. I wanted to support her in any way I could. And now that someone else around Desi's age has the same disease — and you know it's the holidays it's the season to give — I thought I should do something and help in some way" (via Desert Sun). Riley ultimately passed away in April 2018 at age 6, and Ortega expressed her condolences through a Twitter post to emphasize the importance of finding a treatment for the illness that claimed Cechin's life at the same age two years earlier.

Given that an actor's physical appearance continuously draws attention and plays a role in their career, working as an actor in the film and television industry can be brutal for one's self-image. Ortega revealed to People Magazine that she had gone through a similar ordeal, recalling a negative experience when she was made to feel "shameful" about her freckles when she was a teenager: "I think any insecurity that I had with my skin was more in terms of working with makeup artists. I remember [one] once made a comment about not being able to match my skin tone correctly [and] that my freckles made my face look dirty and that they needed to cover things up. For a while, I was really ashamed of my freckles and didn't want to show my face ever." 

As a result, Ortega decided to endorse a message of "positivity and the beauty of uniqueness" after becoming the brand ambassador of the skincare brand Neutrogena in 2020, whose products Ortega claims to have been using for most of her life. The actress told People, "It was the only skincare brand I saw in my house growing up," as she went on to describe her "consistent" skincare routine using a variety of Neutrogena products. She concluded by highlighting how important influencer diversity, visibility, and brand messaging are, as well as how her vision aligns with the brand's mission to spread "a message that's about embracing natural beauty."

Ortega found that playing Wednesday Addams comes with its own expectations and difficulties given that the character has been ingrained in the cultural zeitgeist for nearly 60 years, ever since she made her on-screen debut in the 1964 sitcom, "The Addams Family." The actress had to study fencing, archery, canoeing, cello, and German in order to match the multiple talents demonstrated by her character on-screen for the 2022 Netflix series (per BT). 

Additionally, Ortega faced the creative obstacles of working with multiple directors on the series, each of whom had their own visions for her character. She explained to "Wednesday" co-star Christina Ricci (via Deadline), "We were going from Tim [Burton] to another director, back to Tim, to another director. I felt like everybody wanted different things from her ... There were a lot of battles like that because I felt like people didn't always trust me when I was creating my path in terms of, 'Okay, this is her arc. This is where she gets emotional.'"

Ortega added, "I would call my parents every night in a panic because I felt like it was different from any job I had ever done before ... I got out to Romania and we started training and shooting immediately. We didn't really have time for rehearsals. I remember it being very stressful and confusing. I did the best I could, but that's probably the most overwhelming job I've ever had."