Wait, Did Jenna Ortega Predict She'd Play Wednesday Back In Her Disney Days?
This old Stuck in the Middle clip is a major foreshadowing moment.
Jenna Ortega may actually possess some of Wednesday’s psychic powers. After she wowed everyone with her dead-eyed, darkly funny take on the Addams Family’s torture-loving daughter, fans noticed a spookily telling line from a very different character Ortega once played. This goes all the way back to her Disney days, when one of Ortega’s Stuck in the Middle quotes eerily foreshadowed her becoming Wednesday several years later.
Before she was fighting monsters and glowering at her classmates on Wednesday, Ortega’s first main acting role was the total opposite of her sullen Netflix character. Back in 2016, she helmed the Disney Channel sitcom Stuck in the Middle as the overlooked inventor Harley Diaz. The differences between Harley and Wednesday are incredibly obvious: Harley is a plucky and optimistic 13-year-old who’s often disappointed in her family for not noticing her since she’s the middle of seven children, whereas Wednesday would love nothing more than for her family to stop pestering her. While Ortega’s two roles couldn’t be more opposite, fans noticed an unexpected connection between them after Wednesday premiered.
A clip from Stuck in the Middle went viral following Wednesday’s success, in which Harley plainly refers to herself as Wednesday, eerily predicting Ortega’s big role six years before she would don the iconic black braids.
“This is what happens when there are seven kids and you’re stuck in the middle. If my family was a week, I would be Wednesday,” Harley said in the clip.
At the time, Ortega had no idea just how prophetic that line was, but now it’s come full circle.
The clip is especially surprising since many of Ortega’s fans may not remember her Disney beginnings, considering how diametrically opposed her sweet, sunny sitcom was compared to her more recent project. After Stuck in the Middle ended in 2018, Ortega took a swift turn toward horror, first testing the darker waters in Season 2 of Netflix’s psychological thriller You before going full scream queen in slashers like Scream and X. Obviously, Wednesday fits right in with those scarier projects, and maybe Ortega knew it would be in her future even back when she was on Disney Channel.
