Jenna Ortega's Wednesday Makes Record-Breaking Debut Week on Netflix
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Jenna Ortega is rising to the top with her new role as the iconic Wednesday Addams in the new Netflix original series, Wednesday.
The 20-year-old actress became the first Latina to portray the beloved character and has now soared to the top of the TV streaming charts as the series drew 341.23M hours viewed during its first week, holding the record for the most hours viewed in a week for any English-language TV series on Netflix, Deadline reports.
The teenage comedy beat Stranger Things 4, which previously held the title, reaching 335M for its first week. However, the all-time record holder continues to be Squid Game with 571.8M in its peak week.
Courtesy of Netflix
Wednesday is summoning quite the success worldwide as it has made the top 10 in all of Netflix's 93 countries, sitting at No.1 in 83 of them.
The star-studded series follows an adolescent Wednesday as she becomes a student at Nevermore Academy after pulling a prank at her previous high school. During her stay, she gets in touch with her psychic powers and seeks to solve a mystery haunting the local town while also uncovering a murder that involved her own parents, Morticia and Gomez 25 years earlier.
For Ortega, the role has gone beyond the importance of Wednesday into pop culture.
"You know, I've never played someone so iconic before. What I appreciated about this one is that it hasn't been done before and she's never been seen in that way," the Jane the Virgin actress told People Chica. "But for me, it was exciting because I can't think of any known Latin characters that are considered somewhat iconic that reached the same level and fanbase that Wednesday does."
Courtesy of Netflix
She hopes her breakthrough will help make space for other Latino actors and actresses in Hollywood to pursue iconic castings.
"But I still want people to be able to see a Latina character on screen, and not just Latinas or Latinos, I want everybody to be able to relate to that person. Because the less division or the less, 'Oh, she stands out because of this [or] that,' the more widely accepted it'll become [and] the less I think people will feel isolated in the fact that they're not the same as everyone else, you know," she explains.
Wednesday is now streaming on Netflix.
