With director Miguel Arteta’s Yes Day now streaming on Netflix, I recently spoke to Jenna Ortega about making the fun family film. Based on the bestselling children's book Yes Day, written by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld, the film is about a mom (Jennifer Garner) and dad (Edgar Ramírez) who usually say no to everything allowing their kids (Ortega, Julian Lerner, and Everly Carganilla) 24 hours where they have to say yes to their requests. As you might imagine, chaos ensues and lessons are learned. Yes Day also stars Fortune Feimster, Nat Faxon, Arturo Castro, and Molly Sims.
During the interview, she talked about what it’s really like filming a scene where you need to eat a lot of ice cream, if she gets nervous when filming big crowd scenes, how she got paid to ride roller coasters with Jennifer Garner, how she decided to be an actor after watching Man on Fire with Denzel Washington and Dakota Fanning, and more. In addition, she talks about how she ended up in Ti West’s X and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett’s Scream.
Check out what she had to say in the player above and below is exactly what we talked about.
Jenna Ortega:
- How did she decide to be an actor at six years old?
- What TV series would she like to guest star on?
- What movie has she seen the most?
- Has she done a yes day with her family since making the movie?
- What was it like filming the scene where the entire family is eating a ton of ice cream?
- How she got paid to ride roller coasters with Jennifer Garner in this movie.
- Was she nervous to film the big crowd scenes where she was the main focus of the scene?
- How her next two projects are both horror (Scream and Ti West’s X).
- Talks about her audition process for Scream.