Jenna Ortega, who played Wednesday Addams on Netflix's record-breaking TV series, said she was extremely sick with Covid when she performed her viral dance scene.
She told NME that she felt so ill that she was unable to do a second take:
"I choreographed that myself!" Ortega tells us later. "I'm not a dancer and I'm sure that's obvious. I'd gotten the song [The Cramps' 1981 single 'Goo Goo Muck'] about a week before and I just pulled from whatever I could… it's crazy because it was my first day with COVID so it was awful to film."
Wait, what?
"Yeah, I woke up and – it's weird, I never get sick and when I do it's not very bad – I had the body aches. I felt like I'd been hit by a car and that a little goblin had been let loose in my throat and was scratching the walls of my esophagus. They were giving me medicine between takes because we were waiting on the positive result."
MGM, the production company behind Wednesday, confirmed to NME via email that "strict COVID protocols were followed and once the positive test was confirmed production removed Jenna from set."
From Insider:
Ortega also thinks she could've done the dance much better a second time if the crew had had more time during production.
She said: "I asked to redo it but we didn't have time. I think I probably could have done it a bit better."
The revelation that the show's producers knew Ortega had Covid but had her do the scene anyway has generated backlash on social media:
