Yahoo News Jenna Ortega says she choreographed the viral Wednesday dance in just 2 days: 'I had not gone over it at all'
Turns out, Wednesday's child is not only full of woe but also has some serious choreography skills.
Wednesday star Jenna Ortega revealed that she turned down working with a choreographer and instead crafted the Netflix show's now-viral dance all by herself — in just two days. The routine, which appears in the series' fourth episode, features the titular character flashing her quintessential dead-eyed stare as she shuffles, spins, and waves her hands from side to side to the Cramps' 1981 hit "Goo Goo Muck."
"[Director Tim Burton] came to my trailer about two days before we shot it and said, 'Hey Jenna, so I know you said you wanted to choreograph this yourself,'" she explained on Friday's episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. "He was like, 'I know you got it, you've been working on it, I'm not even worried about it. I trust you.' And I said, 'Oh, yeah. You know, it's all so good.'"
The only problem? "I had not gone over it at all," she confessed. "I was doing cello that week, fencing that week. I just didn't have time… Oh my God, I was kicking myself. I felt like such a fool."
So then Ortega hunkered down and watched "just anything I could get my hands on" that would provide inspiration for the sequence.
"I'm not a dancer. I don't do any of that. I have no experience in that field," she said. "I didn't sleep for two days. I watched videos of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Denis Lavant in Beau Travail. I found archival footage of goth kids dancing in clubs in the '80s. Lene Lovich. Nina Hagen. And then, on the day, I thought, 'All right, let's see what happens.'"
Still, Ortega had "certain things" in mind that she wanted to incorporate into the dance, including a sweet throwback to one of her predecessors. "I paid homage to Lisa Loring, the first Wednesday Addams. I did a little bit of her shuffle that she does," she recalled. "Of course they cut out of camera when I did do it, but it's there! I know it is!"
The freakishly delightful end result wasn't exactly as fun as it looked for Ortega, who told NME last month that she tested positive for COVID during the dance and had to be removed from the set. "I felt like I'd been hit by a car and that a little goblin had been let loose in my throat and was scratching the walls of my esophagus," she told the outlet. "They were giving me medicine between takes because we were waiting on the positive result."
Despite its difficulties, the dance has since taken off like wildfire on TikTok, with a whole host of individuals recreating the routine, including Lady Gaga.
"Netflix, they were telling me, 'Oh, you know, Jenna, this is gonna be a thing on TikTok.' And I thought, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, whatever,'" Ortega joked on The Tonight Show. "I figured, you know, they're excited. They're getting hyped up. And then they were right."
Wednesday is streaming now on Netflix.
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