NO BUSINESS LIKE WOE BUSINESS

WEDNESDAY STAR JENNA ORTEGA AND DIRECTOR TIM BURTON — IN THEIR FIRST JOINT INTERVIEW — ENDURE OUR QUESTIONS ABOUT HOW THEY PULLED OFF NETFLIX'S BIGGEST SHOW EVER AND WHERE THEY WILL (AND DEFINITELY WILL NOT) GO NEXT

- BY JAMES HIBBERD PHOTOGRAPHED BY ERIK MADIGAN HECK

Jenna Ortega and Tim Burton sit in darkness from you, and there’s a lot to unpack.

The red-hot star and the black-heart director are a study in surface-level contrasts and soon-to-be-revealed similarities. This is their first major sit-down interview together, and both are a bit anxious. Ortega is sometimes fidgety and other times gives you that frozen Wednesday Addams stare. The more freewheeling Burton — with his signature dark carnival-spun cotton candy hair — routinely tries out several sentences before deciding which is best.

They are, Burton warns, sharing a joint discomfort with the obligatory interview process as they have battle scars from past press encounters (with Ortega sporting a particularly fresh wound). Not helping matters is that our chat is being conducted in a drab New York high-rise conference room, where Ortega and Burton look like exotic fish out of water, plucked from the more colourful lagoons they typically inhabit.

Ortega is the 22-year-old sensation who went from head-turning roles in ensemble horror franchise films X and Scream VI to starring in Netflix’s smash hit Wednesday, which follows the droll Addams Family teen as she attends the Nevermore Academy school for “outsiders.” Ortega also costarred in fall's Warner Bros. box office hit Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

Both Wednesday and the Beetlejuice franchise are directed by the 66-year-old Burton, who's enjoying a late-career revival thanks to these back-to-back hits with his Gen Z star. With a list of credits ranging from Batman to Ed Wood to Sweeney Todd, Burton has long been a singularly unique goth artist type who has somehow managed to survive, and often thrive, within the studio system. (Burton doesn't use the word "goth," by the way. "It's lost meaning," he says. But it's tough to detach his brand from that word — and it's safe to assume he doesn't like the word "brand," either.)