Jenna Ortega Thinks She Lost A Major Role To Zendaya

Jenna Ortega is convinced she missed out on one of Zendaya’s biggest movie roles. Speaking recently to Buzzfeed, the actor recalled past auditions that didn’t go her way, revealing that she thinks she tried out for Dune when she was just 15.

“I remember being a big fan of that film and that franchise and everything like that and being really excited for the interview because Denis [Villeneuve] is one of my favorite filmmakers,” Ortega said. “I think it was Chani, I think it was Zendaya’s. But they weren’t saying that, everything was very secret.”

Zendaya was ultimately cast as Chani in 2021’s Dune, starring opposite Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Stellan Skarsgard, Dave Bautista, and Josh Brolin. Her role was relatively small at first, but it expanded in the much-anticipated sequel Dune: Part Two, which was released in March 2024 and earned more than $700 million at the global box office. She’ll reprise her role in the third installment, releasing in 2026.

Jenna’s Big Break

Despite missing out on Dune, Ortega’s career began to take off after her portrayal of Harley Diaz in the Disney Channel sitcom Stuck in the Middle, which led to her first major big-screen role in 2022’s Scream.

The actor was later cast as the lead in Netflix’s Wednesday, a show that made her (and her dance moves) more popular than ever. A second season of the morbid supernatural mystery series is currently in the works, and Ortega has been named an executive producer.

In the meantime, she’s promoting her forthcoming film Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. The long-awaited sequel to Tim Burton’s 1998 movie Beetlejuice is due out Sept. 6, and Ortega shared behind-the-scenes tidbits from the set during her Buzzfeed interview.

“I really like the third act climax, just because we have a big scene in a church. That was so much going on. We shot it for about three weeks, everybody’s in it,” she teased. “It was a lot of fun to shoot, but also going to the underworld for the first time and understanding that we kinda had to walk on a tilt.”

In the film, Ortega plays Astrid Deetz, the daughter of Winona Ryder’s Lydia. The cast also includes Catherine O’Hara, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Willem Dafoe, and the menacing Beetlejuice himself, Michael Keaton.

“It was really strange to see him become Beetlejuice because he was unrecognizable,” Ortega said of Keaton’s performance. “It was the first time I think I had ever really seen someone completely disappear. No bit of themselves involved, so that was pretty special.”