Jenna Ortega may be known for her darker roles, but the star wasn’t always a fan of spooky things.
During a Monday appearance on the “Today” show, the “Wednesday” actor admitted that she “was scared of everything” as a child, including the original “Beetlejuice” movie.
Ortega, who now stars in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” the highly anticipated sequel to the campy but creepy original 1988 Tim Burton film, told “Today” co-anchor Hoda Kotb that she had a complicated relationship with scary movies during her younger years.
“I was scared of ‘Beetlejuice.’ I loved the ‘Gremlins’ but I hated them at the same time,” Ortega said. “So I was always very confused, but I think I got older and I realized that excitement is the same as fear. So it’s like, when I’m scared, I can just tell myself I’m excited.”
“And you can do the same, vice versa, but I just try to place it somewhere else, because I hated being scared all the time,” she continued.
Santiago Felipe via Getty Images
Although “Beetlejuice” used to keep Ortega awake at night, she said it was an “immediate yes” when she was offered her part by Burton, who she first worked with on the “Addams Family” spinoff “Wednesday.”
“Tim kind of threw me off guard when he told me this news, and I didn’t know what to do about it,” she said. “He gave me the script, I pulled over on the side of the road and just read it as soon as I possibly could.”
“So within two hours, I called my team,” Ortega continued. “I said, ‘I can’t tell you what this is about, but just know I’m doing another job with Tim.’”
Ortega also discussed working with some of the original “Beetlejuice” cast — including Michael Keaton, Catherine O’Hara and Winona Ryder (Ortega plays Ryder’s daughter, Astrid Deetz, in the sequel) — and how getting to see Keaton’s oddball bio-exorcist come to life was a dream, saying “it was unbelievable.”
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” arrives in theaters on Sept. 6.