Less than a month after Wednesday premiered on Netflix, Jenna Ortega’s character’s iconic dance scene is still making the rounds on social media. On Friday, Ortega opened up about the story behind the viral dance.
The dance scene takes place in Wednesday, Season 1, Episode 4, Woe What a Night, in which Wednesday Addams (Ortega) attends a dance at Nevermore School. In one scene, her usually unemotional character lets loose a bit and dances to Goo Goo Muck by The Cramps.
Viewers instantly fell in love with the dance and began to recreate it on social media. However, Wednesday’s solo dance number wasn’t originally planned.
Ortega explained during an interview that the plan was initially to have a flash mob during the dance. However, she vetoed the idea, arguing it would’ve been out of character for Wednesday to dance with a bunch of other students.
Director Tim Burton eventually agreed with Ortega to let Wednesday have her moment. Things didn’t start coming together fully, though, until just about a week before the episode was to be shot.
The week before the shoot, Burton revealed to her that he had chosen the Goo Goo Muck song for the dance. Then, it was all up to Ortega to figure out what to do with it.
Jenna Ortega choreographed the dance herself
While appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Ortega explained that she had asked Burton if she could choreograph the dance. About two days before the shoot, he went to her trailer to tell her that he trusted her completely to choreograph it.
What Burton didn’t know at the time is that Ortega hadn’t gone over the dance at all at that point. Instead, she ended up coming up with the dance in just those two days.
According to her, she didn’t sleep for two days straight while she prepared. Although she had never choreographed a dance before, she started doing some in-depth research.
Ortega explained that she watched videos of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Denis Lavant in the film Beau Travail, goth kids dancing in the 80s, and Lene Lovich and Nina Hagen performances. She pretty much watched anything she could get her hands on that was in line with Wednesday’s persona.
After getting an idea of a few things that she wanted to do, she just went into the shoot and winged it. During the shoot, she revealed that the crew members had warned her that the dance would become a TikTok thing.
She hadn’t believed them at the time, but they were right. TikTok has been filled with users recreating her dance and loving it.
Ortega dished on Scream 6
While everyone wanted to know about her viral dance, Ortega and Fallon did take a moment to discuss some other exciting news. On December 14, the trailer for Scream 6 premiered, giving a glimpse of Ortega’s return to the franchise.
The trailer also went viral, with Fallon stating it received 3 million views on its first day. Noting that this is Ortega’s second Scream film, Fallon questioned if Ortega enjoyed appearing in the meta-horror films.
Surprisingly, Ortega confirmed that she did enjoy doing horror and found the process “therapeutic.” She also explained her experience on the film was elevated by the Scream cast and crew.
Ortega revealed that no one in the Scream community could “take anything seriously.” This resulted in some scenes having to be reshot due to the cast laughing too hard during filming.
As a result, the Scream cast has quite a bit of fun despite shooting darker content. However, Fallon questioned if she might be getting typecast, considering she’s largely appeared in horror content.
Ortega wasn’t too concerned, stating with a shrug, “It’s something about my face.” While it’s unclear if her face does have something to with it, it can’t be denied that Ortega has a knack for the horror/gothic genre.