In an interview with Kid Cudi’s brand-new podcast Big Bro, Jenna Ortega opened up about her audition for Ari Aster‘s 2018 horror flick Hereditary. The Wednesday actress was only 12 years old then, and she’s clearly never forgotten the audition.
“I think I auditioned for Hereditary, which obviously wouldn’t have made any sense, especially for, like, my disposition as a kid, so I understood,” Ortega told Cudi. The two are friends from working together on Ti West‘s slasher film X.
Ortega said that while she only received a select portion of the script, she still sensed its weight. “I didn’t know what I was looking at and they gave us barely any sides,” she explained. “It was like two pages of just ominous words that, as a 12-year-old, went over the head.”
Even so, something clicked. She recalled, “I remember seeing it, looking at it, and thinking, ‘I feel like this is an important movie,’ and then it was.”
Ortega had auditioned for the role of Charlie, the film’s 13-year-old daughter, which ultimately went to Milly Shapiro. Cast in her cinema debut, the 14-year-old Broadway actress earned the role after an audition that immediately relieved Aster, who said the “chances were slim” he would find the right actress, having left Charlie’s personality more ambiguous than other characters.
When Ortega Found Out
The full-circle moment came when Ortega watched the film in theaters. She recalled watching the finished film with her mother and recognizing it as the project she had auditioned for. “I sat up in my chair and I looked at my mom and I said, ‘This is the one that I said was going to be in,'” she shared.
When Cudi admitted he can be “really bitter” about parts he doesn’t get, Ortega insisted she has always taken rejection well. “I never really question it,” she said. “I didn’t want to get in my head about that sort of thing, and what’s meant to be mine will come to me.”
It worked out for her.
Hereditary premiered at Sundance in January 2018 and went on to gross $90 million against a $10 million budget, now widely regarded as one of the greatest horror films of all time. And Ortega, of course, went on to build her own horror legacy, most notably as the lead of Netflix’s Wednesday.
