On the eve of Wednesday's cultural domination, "Tim" invited Jenna Ortega to his house for a meeting. I love when this happens in Hollywood conversations: casually, not even pretentiously, legends referred to by first names only, as Ortega does over a clandestine morning coffee. Here is Wednesday on a Sunday at Velvet, a moody cocktail bar at the Corinthia hotel in London.
Tim, in this case, is Tim Burton, the mad goth genius behind Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Wednesday's director and executive producer. Even before the biting teen take on The Addams Family exploded into Emmy nominations and Tik Tok choreo and tween girls' birthday party themes, the hallowed filmmaker wanted to talk to Ortega, his show's then 20-year-old star, about a second season. She dutifully compiled ideas.
A week after that, Ortega arrived at Burton's California home, the stuff of legend itself: "You walk in and it's the huge throne from Alice in Wonderland." Ortega sets the scene. "There's a jar of eyeballs in the bathroom." Burton is known to tote figurines, "his little creatures," she says, in his pocket at all times. They small-talked, though Burton doesn't really do small talk. A season two of Wednesday, yes, but first something else. "He just pretty much plopped a script in my hand," Ortega says, "and it was Beetlejuice."
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