Jenna Ortega says she has stopped complimenting fans after repeated awkward encounters left her feeling like a “creep.”
The 24-year-old actress, who rocketed to global fame playing Wednesday Addams in Netflix’s 2022 hit series, shared the boundary shift during appearances on two separate podcasts. She explained that media training from her early Disney Channel days still shapes how she navigates public life, but she is now drawing firmer lines around fan interactions.
“They told us, you know, ‘Every time someone meets you, it’s probably the only time they’re ever going to interact with you, like that’s a very special moment in their lives. So just be aware of that’,” Ortega said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. The advice, she noted, “never left” her.
That awareness has come with complications. On Greatest Hits Radio, host Zoe Ball asked the Scream actor whether she would ever dress as Wednesday herself for Halloween. Ortega instead described two recent encounters that soured her on approaching costumed fans.
The first happened in New York, where she spotted a young girl dressed as Enid, Wednesday’s brightly colored roommate from the series. “I saw this Enid and I said, ‘oh my God, I love your costume, you look great’. And she looked at me like I was a creep,” Ortega recounted.
A similar scene played out with another child. “Her wig was falling off,” Ortega continued, “And I told her, ‘oh, you look so beautiful’. And she looked at me and then ran back to her classmates.”
The twin rejections prompted a decisive change in approach. “I’m done in that department,” she stated flatly. She now “leaves them be” rather than risk another uncomfortable exchange.
Ortega acknowledged the broader strain of public visibility, even with young admirers. “Kids and things like that, of course. It is a lot though,” she said. She described fan encounters as a mixed bag: “Some of the interactions are so sweet, and then some of them are a little bit more embarrassing or aggressive or mean. And it’s hard to know what the balance is. But you just… I do what I can.”
The actress also emphasized her ongoing effort to establish healthier limits. “Sometimes I try to give myself grace, and I’m trying to have better boundaries,” she added on Happy Sad Confused.
Ortega’s path to Wednesday began with child roles, including the Disney Channel series Stuck in the Middle from 2016 to 2018. She later appeared in Netflix’s You in 2019 before Tim Burton’s gothic reimagining of the Addams Family character made her one of Hollywood’s most recognizable young stars. The role demanded extensive physical training and transformed her public profile from working actor to global phenomenon almost overnight.
That sudden escalation has clearly complicated her relationship with the audience that followed. Where she once felt obligated to engage warmly with every fan encounter, the accumulated awkwardness—particularly with children who failed to recognize her or simply found a stranger’s praise unsettling—has pushed her toward retreat.
Ortega is currently promoting Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the long-awaited sequel to Tim Burton’s 1988 horror comedy, in which she plays Astrid Deetz, the teenage daughter of Winona Ryder’s Lydia.