If you haven’t seen Jenna Ortega’s viral dance scene as her title character in Netflix’s ‘Wednesday,’ you probably haven’t been on the internet in a while.
Netflix’s Addams Family spinoff came out this November and follows a teenage girl on Wednesday (Ortega) after she transfers schools and begins to solve a murder mystery. In the now-viral scene, Ortega dances with her date at a school dance — although it’s more accurate to say she’s performing to the her date while chattering pulp fiction around him.
In a later Interview with NMEOrtega revealed that she actually had Covid while filming this scene.
“I choreographed that myself!” Ortega said NME. “I’m not a dancer and I’m sure that’s obvious. I got the song [The Cramps’ 1981 single ‘Goo Goo Muck’] about a week ago and I was just getting all I could out there… it’s crazy because it was my first day with COVID so it was horrible to film.
Ortega went on to detail her symptoms, telling NME, “Yeah, I woke up and — it’s weird, I never get sick and when I do, it’s not very bad — I had body aches. I felt like I’d been hit by a car and that a little goblin was released down my throat and clawed at the walls of my esophagus. They gave me medicine between shots because we were waiting for the positive result.”
After Ortega was confirmed positive for Covid, NME reports that MGM, the production company of “Wednesday”, removed Ortega from the set and that “strict Covid protocols were followed”. However, some fans have criticized the decision to have an ailing actor on set.
Everything wrong with America’s response to Covid is summed up in people applauding Jenna Ortega for doing her dance scene on Wednesday while she had Covid.
… she should have been masked and at home.
— Hillary Monahan (@HillaryMonahan) December 5, 2022
A user wrote“That’s a bad thing, isn’t it? We all agree that this is not a moment to go through difficulties, it’s a moment why the hell she wasn’t sent home, she could get terribly ill or somehow infect others.”
Another user added“Everything that’s wrong with America’s response to Covid is that people are applauding Jenna Ortega for doing her dance scene on Wednesday while she had Covid… she should have been masked and at home.”
The American work ethic is woven into this conversation — the idea that people should be celebrated for working sick or in pain — as well as the pandemic, COVID safety, and our collective responsibility not just to ourselves but to others as well from infection to protect .
The scene is of course excellent. But it probably couldn’t have waited until Ortega was healthy and no longer contagious.
Image Source: Getty/NBC