Jenna Ortega makes shocking career announcement as fans await ‘Wednesday’ Season 3
Jenna Ortega plans to step away from TV work when “Wednesday” comes to an end.
“I actually haven’t had a lot of franchise conversations. I haven’t,” Ortega shared during an appearance on Josh Horowitz’s “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, released on Thursday.
“But what I’m meant to do will come and find me,” she continued. “I think after ‘Wednesday,’ I’ll probably be off the TV for a while.”
Ortega noted that she’d had “many years doing that.”
“I was bouncing from show to show as a kid, this to this, and I want to leave time for new things,” Ortega, now 24, explained.
The news season — which is set to drop in 2027 — sees Ortega return to her role as the Addams family’s famously macabre-obsessed gothic daughter.
She appears opposite returning co-stars Luis Guzmán as Gomez Addams, Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Addams and Isaac Ordonez as Pugsley Addams on the Tim Burton-directed series.
Netflix announced production on Season 3 began production in February, revealing that Ortega’s “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” co-star Winona Ryder was joining the show alongside Eva Green.
The streamer then announced in September that production on the third season had “met its grave” and concluded.
“Wednesday” has been a huge hit for Netflix since its 2022 premiere, winning four Emmys to date — plus a nod for Ortega among other nominations. The second season aired in 2025.
Ortega has been acting in films and television since the early 2010s, appearing in shows like “Jane the Virgin,” “Stuck in the Middle” and “You.”
The actress has been open about the stresses of being a young person in the entertainment industry, confessing earlier this year that she went “all day” without eating or drinking on set as a child star.
Her movie projects have included “Iron Man 3” (2013), “The Fallout” (2021), “X” (2022) and “Death of a Unicorn” (2025).
Ortega’s willingness to step away from the spotlight isn’t new; the actress famously bowed out of the “Scream” franchise after starring in 2022’s “Scream” (the fifth film in the series) and 2023’s “Scream VI.”
In a 2025 interview with the Cut, Ortega revealed she exited the horror film series because her on-screen sister, Mellissa Barrera, was fired for expressing support for Palestine amid the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza.
She also noted it was because co-directors Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin weren’t returning for 2026’s “Scream VII.”
“The Melissa stuff was happening, and it was all kind of falling apart,” Ortega told the publication. “If ‘Scream VII’ wasn’t going to be with that team of directors and those people I fell in love with, then it didn’t seem like the right move for me in my career at the time.”
Ortega also revealed earlier this year that she almost quit acting altogether before landing her role on “You,” while chatting with her “X” co-star Kid Cudi on his podcast.
“It just felt like a good time to call it quits if I was going to,” she shared.
