Jenna Ortega has been hard at work making Tim Burton’s eclectic stories come to life with both Wednesday and the upcoming Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice over the last year or so. But when she’s not playing a goth teen, she’s been exploring a different type of talent: music.
Ortega stopped by The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon where she discussed bringing her love of music onto set with her. “Sometimes I like to bring my synthesizer to set, because I feel like music is the best way to get to know somebody,” she revealed. Ortega is currently shooting season two of Wednesday, which she is also producing.
But she believes that music helps her bond with her co-stars in way that just acting can’t. Maybe it’s the silly costumes or the excessive eyeliner, but it might be hard to take each other seriously on a Tim Burton set.
She explained, “You come on these sets, and you see people that you’ve never met before and then you’re super close to them for two months, and then you never see them again. So I got the synthesizer because I wanted to play music for people or get a feel for what they like, and then I can make them playlists or get to know them a little better.” She didn’t reveal what is on Michael Keaton’s playlist, but now that we know it exists, there must be a way to aquire it.
In addition to her playlist curation, Ortega also wants to venture into composing. “I would love to be a composer. I love film scores, I love everything about film scores, and composing is just so interesting to me. I like to do it a little in my free time.” It seems tough to imagine someone as in-demand as Ortgea having free time, but maybe she’ll be dropping an experimental goth-inspired ambient drone album sometime soon. Maybe!
Check out the full clip above.