Jenna Ortega Didn't Expect to Go Viral for Encouraging Winona Ryder to Set Boundaries With the Paparazzi: 'That's Nothing to Praise'
By Stephanie Kaplan,
2024-09-04
The stars of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice have each other's backs!
In a new interview, Jenna Ortega , Winona Ryder and Catherine O'Hara reflected on the viral moment when the Wednesday star assured Ryder she didn't have to listen to the paparazzi's request to take her sunglasses off while on the red carpet.
"Jenna, the other day at [the Venice Film Festival], it was so powerful when you told Winona that she didn’t have to take off her sunglasses," the Hits Radio UK journalist noted.
Ortega, 21, was unaware the August 28 interaction had spread across social media, though the Stranger Things actress, 52, had caught wind of it.
"I think this is my first viral moment!" she proudly noted. "They were screaming, 'Take your glasses off!' And I was like, 'Uhhh.' And Jenna's like, 'No, you don't have to do that.' And it was amazing.'"
"Yeah, it’s so simple. That’s nothing to praise or applaud," the Scream alum insisted . "You don’t have to take your glasses off. It was hot. They looked cool."
"I succumbed, I took them off," O'Hara, 70, confessed. "I kept them on for a while, took them off, then I put them back on. Sorry!"
"We do come from a generation where you’re like: ‘Ugh. OK…’” Ryder acknowledged.
"But also, I think it’s much easier to do it for other people ," the You actress pointed out. "I feel like if I wore glasses and they told me, I think you would have done it like that."
"Yeah, like, if they were screaming that at her. Yeah, I would have lunged at them," Ryder admitted.
"Because it is awkward," Ortega agreed.
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"She was so warm and welcoming and kind and inviting right from the jump, and I couldn’t be more grateful. It was at a time where my career was taking a different turn, and I didn’t realize that I needed that from somebody who could relate, but I did," the starlet spilled to The New York Times , referring to the first season of her Netflix show Wednesday becoming an overnight sensation.
"The way Winona and I got along was quite weird," she shared. "It was like we were reading each other’s minds a little bit."
"I felt like I had entered somebody else’s life, and I didn’t know how to get back to mine," Ortega said of becoming famous at a young age. "Obviously with the success and the attention that she received in the ’90s, Winona had experienced that probably to an even greater extent, so she was the first person that I connected with on that topic, or she made me feel seen where other people necessarily in my life, as much as they wanted to, couldn’t relate or couldn’t understand."
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