Wednesday and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice star Jenna Ortega is opening up about her controversial 2024 erotic thriller Miller’s Girl.
With a pair of Scream films and a role opposite Mia Goth in X already to her credit, Ortega’s career shot into the stratosphere in 2022 when she was cast in the iconic role of Wednesday Addams in director-executive producer Tim Burton’s blockbuster Netflix series Wednesday.
In between her work on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Wednesday Season 2, Ortega starred in the role of Cairo Sweet in Miller’s Girl. Cairo is an 18-year-old literary student who gets entangled in an inappropriate relationship with her English teacher and writing mentor, Jonathan Miller (Martin Freeman).
An independent release, Miller’s Girl only played for a week in limited release when it was released in theaters in January. As such, criticism over the age gap between the two characters—which is exacerbated by a fantasy scene of simulated sex between Cairo and Jonathan—didn’t ramp up until the film debuted on Netflix in late April.
In a new interview with Ortega in Vanity Fair, Ortega said if Miller’s Girl made viewers feel uncomfortable about the inappropriate relationship between Cairo and Jonathan in Miller’s Girl, that was the point.
“It’s not supposed to be a comfortable movie. It’s supposed to be awful at times,” Ortega told Vanity Fair. “Art isn’t always meant to be pleasant or happy and everyone skips off into the sunset at the end. We all have f—ked-up experiences at one point or another.”
Freeman Previously Addressed The Controversy
Shortly after Miller’s Girl was released on Netflix, Freeman discussed the age gap controversy with The Times of London. In real life, Freeman is 21 years older than Ortega.
During the interview, Freeman called Miller’s Girl “grown-up and nuanced” but carefully added, “It’s not saying, ‘Isn’t this great?'”
Despite the controversy, Netflix viewers still streamed Miller’s Girl and made it one of the top 10 most-watched films on the streamer in the U.S. in the first week of May.
Ortega will next star in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which will be released in theaters on September 6. No official release date has been announced by Netflix for Wednesday Season 2, but it is expected to premiere sometime in 2025.
Another new film starring Ortega—the romantic drama Winter Spring Summer or Fall—directed by Tiffany Paulsen and also starring Ortega’s Wednesday Season 1 castmate Percy Hynes White—is still awaiting a release date.
Rated R, Miller’s Girl is still streaming on Netflix.
Read the full article here