Jenna Ortega became a household name after nailing her role as the star of the hit Tim Burton series on Wednesday. While playing Wednesday Addams is her biggest role to date, Jenna is no stranger to the spotlight. The young actress has been working in the film industry since childhood. Her first big break came when she landed the lead role in the Disney Channel TV series Stuck in the Middle. Now, many years after retiring from the company, Jenna has spoken openly about how difficult her experience at The Walt Disney Company really was.
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“Stuck in the Middle” was not an easy job
For many people, Stuck in the Middle was their first encounter with actress Jenna Ortega. The series, which premiered in February 2016, ran for three seasons on Disney Channel. The show followed Jenna’s character, Harley Diaz, as she navigated the difficulties of being “stuck” as a middle child of seven. Harley invented gadgets to cope with her busy family life.
The show was popular with fans, but behind the scenes, the environment was far from perfect. In a recent podcast interview on Armchair Expert, Jenna spoke about the chaos that ensued with the cast during filming.
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She explained, “Kids would start fighting randomly because their parents were fighting. Although the children had no problem with each other because the parents did, they would side with each other. We had therapy sessions, like collective, cast therapy sessions. They had to bring someone in because there was too much trouble on set and how were we supposed to get the family members to shoot together?”
Since the show features a family with seven children, there was a lot of behind-the-scenes engagement with all the parents. At the time, Jenna Ortega was already a fairly established actress, but for many other performers, this was their first big break.
Behind the Scenes Drama on Disney Channel
Photo credit: Disney
Outside of acting, it’s not normal for kids to have full-time jobs. Jenna explains that working as the lead on a Disney Channel show was pretty stressful. The show charted episodes at an incredibly fast pace, and Jenna was also expected to make public appearances. She explained, “…we shot two episodes a week, crazy, crazy hours. We came in on Saturdays and Sundays to extend school hours so we could do less school during the week.”
While working at Disney Channel was undoubtedly brutal, it definitely provided good training for the actress’ future career. Now Jenna is an absolute pro who can handle anything. She has been nominated for Best Actor, hosts Saturday Night Live, co-starred with Penn Badgley on the TV show You, and is an integral part of the Scream franchise. Fans are confident that the difficulties of working on this Disney Channel series only made them stronger in the end.
