Who says that spooky things should only be confined to the month of October? People who don’t like fun, that’s who. Tim Burton’s Wednesday series turned out to be the toast of Thanksgiving weekend on the streaming front. The show, which sets itself pleasingly apart from regurgitating any previous The Addams Family installments, gave us the traditionally poker-faced as portrayed by Jenna Ortega. However, the new incarnation arrives with a pointed unsettling detail: Wednesday never blinks, at least on camera.
This was purposeful, of course, given that no human actor could reasonably be expected to not blink on accident. Never mind that the family is still human (albeit a very weird variety of human) because not blinking sounds painful. Ortega recently revealed on TODAY that she gave the trait a shot during one take, and Burton loved what he saw, so he instructed Ortega to run with it for the entirety of the shoot. You can’t stop blinking now, right? Same. Via NME, here’s what else Ortega offered:
“She doesn’t blink. [Tim Burton] likes it when I tilt my chin down and look through my eyebrows, kind of like a Kubrick stare, and then I relax all the muscles in my face.”
Ortega continued to discuss how blinking would ruin entire takes, and she grew slightly “annoyed,” but that’s all part of the job. Soon enough, she grew accustomed to reserving her blinking spells for when other characters were the focus of the camera. Hopefully, she also got to sneak in a few blinks behind those bangs during that dance scene.
Now, she can freely blink while we all await word of Season 2.