Jenna Ortega Creates a Sculpture of Herself

Can I be completely honest?

'Cause I just chose clay

'cause I haven't touched clay in like 12 years.

But I think you guys may have overestimated my abilities.

Oh, I'm gonna figure it out.

But just so you know,

I, like, I don't even know what that means.

[light classical music]

Hi, my name is Jenna Ortega,

and today I'm going to attempt a self portrait with clay.

[light classical music]

[tools clanging]

Who is this metal man?

[Crew] Who is it? Yeah, what does he do?

This is my guy.

Here we go.

[light classical music]

I had to have been six or seven.

My parents weren't home.

They were doing, either at work

or back to school night or something,

so my older sister was watching me.

And she was watching the movie Man On Fire

with Marc Anthony and Dakota Fanning and Denzel Washington.

And I saw young Dakota in that movie.

Her performance made me so emotional,

and I felt so invested in her character

and her story and what happened

that it made me want to do that.

Her performances were always so mature.

She felt like a grown woman

trapped in this tiny, you know,

sweet little girl's body and mind

and imagination that I think

I was just captivated by her.

She was so fascinating.

And as someone who was close to my age,

I just kind of clung onto her

because I thought she was the coolest.

When my parents came home,

I told them, I said,

You know that movie Man On Fire?

And they said, Why were you watching Man On Fire?

And I said, I'm gonna be

the Puerto Rican version of Dakota Fanning.

And then they laughed,

and then we all went to bed and forgot about it.

Or at least they did.

And then I just kind of harassed them

for years and years until they let me do it.

[light classical music]

I think my mom gave me this monologue book

to kind of shut me up 'cause she did not wanna take me to LA

to join this crazy business.

I memorized so many of those just to show my parents

that I was invested and that I was willing to work hard

and make something real and tangible

out of this interest of mine.

I started watching a ton of movies, a ton of shows,

things that maybe were even outta my depth

because I was so fascinated and curious

and wanted to sound like I knew what I was talking about.

I think I almost became an actor out of spite

because they didn't take me seriously, so I showed them.

And I was lucky enough to fall in love with it

and you know, have this connection with it.

But yeah, whenever they came home from school,

it was, I'm reading the book.

[light classical music]

Well, I used to say that I wanted to be a nurse.

I have siblings who are entering the medical field.

My mom was an ER nurse all her life.

I need something to be obsessed with.

I would love to be an investigative journalist,

where you just kind of delve into what's going on

in the world and being able to inform people.

It's a job that never gets boring.

Kind of like what I do now.

That, or maybe a historian of some sort,

where I just randomly know a lot about something

that other people probably wouldn't think twice about.

To me, there's nothing more attractive

or enticing about a person

than someone who speaks on something

that they're really passionate about.

And you learn a lot from those people.

This is a meat man. I'm sorry, this is so ugly.

Look, he's just a meat man.

[light classical music]

The show that I do right now, I have to play the cello.

And I don't play the cello.

And I want it to look real so that cellists don't look at it

and call me mean names.

My teacher told me

that as long as I looked confident in my movements

and I was strong and stoic and you know,

fully embodied the character, that it would be fine.

And she told me that I just needed

to approach everything I do in life

with the confidence of the average white man.

And that changed my life.

I feel better.

I was nervous to even do this because I ramble like crazy.

So I was like, Man, what am I gonna

talk about for all this time?

And then I just remembered,

How would an average white man do this?

And he probably would've shown up with mismatched socks.

[light classical music]

I just feel like a lot of things are sound bites now.

People's attention span is,

I feel like, is rapidly decreasing.

And I don't know if that's just because

scrolling and TikTok.

I think that's what we all say

and that's kind of what we assume.

But I think a lot of times, when you do an interview now,

people are just waiting for that one bite

or the one headline.

And the things that they ask you to touch upon

are often trends and viral clips

and moments and things that,

yeah, sure, it's fun to acknowledge

and appreciate and talk about,

but I feel like the internet

doesn't know when to quit it or when to drop something.

And then when they do drop something, it's brutal.

It's just very sheep mentality, bandwagon mentality.

And I feel like people oftentimes

don't even read a full interview anymore.

They read a tweet of something that somebody said

that probably is misworded and then it's dead.

I don't know. It's just very hostile.

It's a new time.

[light classical music]

Yeah, especially 'cause I'm a rambler.

I feel like I have all of these different trains of thought

going on in my head at all times.

I'm terrified to see everything that I've said written down

because it makes no sense.

So much of my job is socializing

and communicating with people

that I forget to do that with myself.

I get fearful of the way that I interact with people

because I leave a social interaction and I think,

Oh man, I didn't even sound like myself.

And it's like, You don't even

know what yourself would sound like.

Writing is very informative for me in that way.

I think, when I write, oftentimes I just get to come up

with the best version of myself.

Everything is cleaner. It's more to the point.

I have a better vocabulary.

I was on, like, an hour flight to get here.

Because I didn't have reception

or anything for this hour flight,

I read through this journal that I've had for the past year.

And I was so fascinated because it was my life,

but it almost was from a different perspective.

It almost didn't feel like mine.

So it felt like I was meeting someone again.

And I think that that's wonderful as well,

to have documentation of how you're changing

and growing as a person.

It's the first time I've actually really looked back

at my writing and been grateful and appreciative

towards myself for taking the time

and making that a priority.

[light classical music]

I'm starting to feel adjacent to myself again.

I think there was a time where my life

went through such a transformative experience

that I felt very lost.

I didn't have enough time to connect with myself.

I felt like an image of myself was being projected

that I didn't resonate with.

It's very easy for me to become very pessimistic

and in my head and negative about things.

And I've kind of seen my language

become more constructive rather than harmful.

I don't think I would've picked up on that

or been able to appreciate that

had I not had that written down and documented.

He kind of, on accident, is looking like

one of the aliens from Mars Attacks, I think.

I never said he was gonna be pretty,

and I actually think he's more interesting if he's not.

[light classical music]

Oh, I forgot that I could use this.

With the character that I do or the jobs that I play,

everything is very dark and horror or comedy.

And I think that oftentimes people

think that's what I'm like.

And don't get me wrong, I love dark humor.

I love the jobs that I work on.

They're so much fun and entertaining for me.

But I think people would probably be surprised

to know that I'm a little bit,

I don't wanna do an interview and go,

I'm silly or anything like that.

But I am.

I don't think I'm as intense

as maybe I always come across, which is fine.

I think because the character Wednesday

has been such a thing, which I'm so, so grateful for

and is so incredible and entirely unexpected,

I think oftentimes people just see me as that.

[light classical music]

I don't know what makes me unique.

I think that's kind of somebody else's job.

No, it's not.

I guess you kind of have to figure that out for yourself.

Just took my nail off.

Don't look.

I've got my Wednesday nails on under here.

I think we're just gonna set this to the side

and not worry about it.

I appreciate how curious I am.

I do think I ask a lot of questions.

I'm very, very analytical about things.

And I feel like I'm more interested

in observing and taking in and being aware

of what's going on around me.

I'm sorry, this man, he's dying on me.

[Jenna laughing]

[light classical music]

Right now, I'm reading books that are around my job

that I'm doing right now.

I brought Frankenstein. I brought Dracula.

I brought all of the darker books that I have.

I have, like, A Clockwork Orange.

But I'm currently reading

a music reviewer named Mark Fisher,

who I'm just learning about.

I don't know, he just speaks about his opinions

and views on things and somehow ties it to these artists.

I went into the bookstore

trying to get Capitalist Realism.

They didn't have that book, but they had his last book.

[light classical music]

Just having a moment

over this guy.

I love to run.

And I used to love to run while I was younger.

I get to [laughs]

I get to put all my energy towards that

or have some sort of endorphin release based off of that,

which is incredible and amazing and really exciting.

I wanna wrap this guy up.

I can give him nice little pants and bows and things.

Did I say that I can't multitask?

'Cause I can't.

[light classical music]

I think you're cooler if you're weird.

I think it's probably better to exercise

any sort of self-expression whenever you can.

Even if that means walking down the street

and if you wanna walk in a zigzag, walk in a zigzag.

We're creatures of habit and routine.

And if you're able to break that

and remind yourself that you have free will

and can do whatever you want,

I think that that's really beneficial.

That's labeled as weird, even though it's not really weird

because whatever societal standards

or whatever is trending or important online

tells you otherwise.

And I think that that's so lame.

And if we all look the same and sound the same,

then we're screwed.

My friend told me to make a bowl, and I should have.

But now we have this guy.

I think he has a story. I think he has a background.

I think he's a survivor.

I should've been more considerate towards this man.

And I wasn't.

And what are you gonna do?

[light music]

He's got a little bow.

His arms go like that.

There you go. There's your meat man.

And his name is, we're gonna go with Gherkin Burger.

He came here today.

He dressed well and put himself together

and put one foot in front of the other.

And I think he's a great role model for young people today.

Because with any sort of belief in yourself

or any sort of ambition or drive

despite your hardships, you could end up

in a 45-minute-long Self Portrait Vanity Fair interview.

[light music]