Jenna Ortega deserves all the praise for piecing together her now-iconic dance in Netflix’s “Wednesday” series.
The actor, who plays Wednesday Addams in the “Addams Family” spinoff, spilled the beans about choreographing for the first time during a new video recently posted to “Still Watching Netflix,” one of the streaming service’s official YouTube channels.
Ortega — who planned the moves just a few days before director Tim Burton filmed the sequence — chatted with her co-stars about behind-the-scenes details from the series, including the viral scene in which her beloved character performs a mesmerizingly bizarre goth-inspired dance routine.
The nearly three-minute moment toward the end of Episode 4 showcases Wednesday dominating her school’s dance floor during the Rave’N dance with a slew of electric ’80s-inspired dance moves.
“I actually felt really insecure about this,” the 20-year-old actor revealed while watching the scene alongside co-stars Emma Myers, who stars as Enid Sinclair and Wednesday’s best friend at Nevermore Academy, and Hunter Doohan, who plays Tyler Galpin.
“I choreographed that myself and I think it’s very obvious that I’m not a dancer or choreographer,” she said, laughing.
“No, it’s amazing!” Doohan exclaimed. Myers then followed up by sharing that the magnetic scene is one of her favorites of the series.
Fellow co-star Percy Hynes White, who portrays Xavier, chimed in with support, saying: “I can watch an entire show of just this.”
Much of Ortega’s choreography process for building the titular character’s routine involved her garnering inspiration from “archival footage of goths dancing in clubs.”
Last month, she took to Twitter to also thank “Bob Fosse’s Rich Man’s Frug, Lisa Loring, Lene Lovich, [and] Denis Lavant” for helping her out with the scene.
Fans of the ’60s TV series “The Addams Family” will recognize Wednesday briefly replicating another famous dance routine performed by the first on-screen Wednesday, Lisa Loring, as spotted by an eagle-eyed fan.
The split-second dance moves originate from the episode, “Lurch’s Grand Romance,” which features Wednesday (Loring) teaching Lurch “The Drew.”
Watch Ortega’s full dance scene below.
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