Jenna Ortega met Beetlejuice before she met Michael Keaton on the set of Tim Burton’s highly anticipated film Beetlejuice. During an interview on “The Tonight Snow,” Ortega was asked how it felt to meet a celebrity like Keaton for the first time when he was playing one of his most iconic characters. The answer was scary.
“He came up behind me,” Ortega said. “I was doing my hair and makeup, and I got a touch on my shoulder, and I turned around and it was very scary. He said, ‘Hi, I’m Michael,’ and his face was peeling with mold.”
“I played it cool and then it got cool until I met him a second time in terms of hair and makeup because I introduced myself to him again because I forgot I had already met him,” Ortega added with a laugh.
The sequel to “Beetlejuice” reunites Keaton with Burton and original cast members Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara. Newcomers include Ortega and Willem Dafoe. The film centers on the strained relationship between Lydia Deetz, played by Ryder, and her daughter Astrid, played by Ortega.
In an interview with Vanity Fair Earlier this year, Ortega described Astrid as “weird, but in a different way and not the way you would expect, I would say.”
“The relationship between Lydia and Astrid, my character, is so important,” she added of the sequel. “It’s also really weird because it requires a lot of catching up and putting the pieces together of what’s happened in Lydia’s life since then, which is nice, I think, for anyone who loves the character and is looking forward to seeing her again.”
Ortega added at the time that bringing the gothic aesthetics of the “Beetlejuice” film series to a younger audience in 2024 is part of the reason she was “excited to bring it back.”
“I feel like studios nowadays, of course you want people to sit in the seats and you have to do a remake or a sequel or something like that to get people in, but bringing back ‘Beetlejuice’ — of all stories — is a really good thing because people need to revisit weird, weird, disturbing stories again,” Ortega said. “We need to expose the younger generation who are always on their phones to new artistic and creative ideas. The weirder you get, the more people can see it, and I think that probably does a lot for cinema in general.”
“Beetlejuice” opens in theaters September 6 from Warner Bros. after its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Watch Ortega’s full interview on “The Tonight Show” in the video below.
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