Jenna Ortega: The 20-Year-Old Actress Who Pushes for Diversity

Wednesday may just be a fun series, which gives an original twist to classical characters that have been shown in cartoons, television and movies. However, what stands out is that the Addams family are not only Latino, but also they do not carry any stereotype. Moreover, they are represented by Latino actors: Jenna Ortega as the main character, Luis Guzmán as Gomez and Isaac Ordoñez as little Pugsley.

The Addams Family, created by Charles Addams as a cartoon story in the late ’30s for The New Yorker, originally had no Latino roots. But in the television series of the ’60s, the name “Gomez” (“Homero” in the Spanish versions) was chosen for the father. He was played by the American actor John Astin, who embodied a “Latin lover.”

The public had to wait until the ’90s film was out to see the head of the family played by a Latino actor: the Puerto Rican Raúl Juliá, who brought a true Latin touch to the story. However, the rest of the characters did not show any evidence of those roots. In the movie, Christina Ricci portrayed little Wednesday.

JENNA ORTEGA: A LATINO INSPIRATION

More than 20 years later, Jenna Ortega, the first Latina to bring the dark teenager to life, said in an Empire interview that one of the main reasons she agreed to portray the character in Tim Burton’s series was that “she’s technically a Latina character and that’s never been shown or represented.”

“As someone who struggled, and still struggles to this day, with some sort of feeling of representation or relatability in mainstream media and film and television, I recognized this was an opportunity for me to give that relatability to other girls like myself,” she explained.

Ortega, who was born on September 27, 2002, in California, has stated that she is 75% Mexican and 25% Puerto Rican. She has also told that her great grandmother, on her mother’s side, was and undocumented immigrant from Sinaloa who wanted to give her four daughters a better life. The girls were not allowed to speak Spanish, so they wouldn’t draw attention and risk being deported.

In 2016, when she was 13 years old, Jenna appeared in a livestream promoting the Pride Over Prejudice campaign from DoSomething.org. “It’s important to embrace your culture today, because there are so many different ethnicities in America,” she says. “At the end of the day, you are you. You’ve got to stay true to yourself, and you can’t change yourself in order to fit in or to make someone else feel comfortable.”

In a 2019 post on her Instagram feed, Jenna shared a picture of a sad looking kid. “These are the faces of the innocent children who have died since September while in U.S. custody. I can’t imagine being snatched from my parents, thrown in a cage like a prisoner and kept in unsanitary conditions. How scared they must have felt their last days on this earth. We must demand change for the sake of the kids. No matter where they come from, they’re still kids. Thanks @shaunking for keeping me informed. Election 2020 can’t come soon enough. This can’t be America. Don’t choose sides, choose children #closethecamps,” she wrote as a caption.

When she was acting as young Jane in “Jane the Virgin,” Jenna said that she admired actress Gina Rodriguez, the protagonist, whose parents are Puerto Rican. She remarked that Gina speaks about how the Latino community is not represented on screen the way it should be, and that Latino actors and actresses face additional challenges.

WHO IS JENNA ORTEGA?

Jenna Ortega started her acting career at the early age of nine, with some supporting appearances in TV shows and movies. From 2014 to 2019 she played the younger version of Jane in the series “Jane the Virgin”, and from 2016 to 2018 she was part of the Disney Channel’s sitcom “Stuck in the Middle”. She also gave her voice to Princess Isabel in Disney’s “Elena of Avalor”.

She then acted on the second season of the Netflix thriller series YOU on the film “The Fallout” and on several horror movies -”Scream,” “Studio 666,” “X,” and “American Carnage”- for which she earned the title of “scream queen.” Her main role in Wednesday got her the praise of critics and a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Television Series Musical or Comedy.

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Plus, have we mentioned that she has also published a book? She wrote “It’s all love: Reflections for Your Heart & Soul,” in which Jenna combines her experiences as a teenager, with depression, and of building a name in Hollywood as a Latina. The pages carry a mix of quotes, personal anecdotes, combining spirituality and self-help.

Even though she told her mother she wanted to be an actress when she was just six years old, Jenna knew she wasn’t going to play the stereotypical roles expected for Latinas: a servant or the daughter of a drug dealer. Even though she got her fair share of rejections, she finally found a place in the Disney universe. Then, she was able to show she could do something entirely different: be a horror queen. Who knows what she will choose to do next? But one thing seems to be clear: she won’t budge and play Latino stereotypes.