‘Scream 6’ Star Jenna Ortega Has a Shocking Response To Being Referred to as a Scream Queen

Picture by way of Spyglass Media/ Paramount Photos

Nobody is denying that Jenna Ortega is among the quickest and brightest rising stars in Hollywood proper now, due to a killer couple of years for the 20-year-old actress that features headlining Netflix’s smash-hit TV collection Wednesday. As her position because the gothic teen heroine attests to, Ortega is particularly a present main mild within the horror style, after a number of appearances in scary films. Not least 2022’s Scream legacy sequel and its follow-up Scream VI, which is in cinemas now.

It’s stunning, then, that whereas everybody else would possibly already see her this manner, Ortega herself doesn’t suppose she’s managed to earn the hallowed honorific of “scream queen” simply but. Whereas talking to Lifeless Meat to advertise Paramount slasher six-quel, the actress was introduced with an inventory of her horror tasks — which incorporates The Babysitter: Killer Queen, X, and Studio 666 — and requested for her opinion on the “scream queen” title. Right here’s what the standard star needed to say about it:

“I really feel like ‘scream queen’ is an honor I’m not able to take but. I really feel like you’ll want to do quite a bit, or you’ll want to do one thing that basically solidifies that place and title for you. I don’t know if I’ve labored my approach in direction of that but.”

As that reply suggests, Ortega is a card-carrying horror fanatic, therefore why she holds the scream queen title in such excessive regard. In truth, she went on to wax lyrical about how a lot this style means to her as each a viewer and as a performer:

“I feel that the style, I don’t know, I simply love blood and guts and screaming and crying and I feel there’s one thing very cathartic and therapeutic in regards to the course of. I feel that horror movies have so many various sides and I really feel prefer it actually challenges you as an actor with a purpose to form of create an correct through-line and make the romance degree of the undertaking make sense, main into the comedy and main into the horror…”

Hilariously, Ortega would’ve continued to say extra about her love of horror, however the interview was crashed by Scream co-star Jason Savoy Brown.

Ortega raises some intriguing factors about what constitutes an official scream queen. Regardless of the handful of horror films underneath her belt, she hasn’t been the central star of any of them, so that could be a possible roadblock to her rightfully claiming the title. Nonetheless, her many followers on the market would seemingly not complain if Ortega was completely happy to take the scream queen crown.

Scream VI is in theaters in all places as of Friday, March 10.