After two seasons of playing onscreen roommates and besties in Wednesday — Season 2 is now streaming — Jenna Ortega and Emma Myers sit down to interview each other about their real-life friendship, the first time they met, and what exactly makes their characters Wednesday and Enid’s offbeat dynamic work.

Jenna Ortega: We’re interviewing each other, girl.

Emma Myers: I like it.

Ortega: Do you remember when we first met? What was your first impression of me?

Myers: Oh, when we first met it was awkward.

Ortega: It was.

Myers: I remember I gave you a hug. But before that, we met on Zoom for my chemistry read, but we didn't actually talk at all during that because it was just a quick in-and-out chemistry read. And I remember crying afterwards because I cut off one of your lines and I was like, “Well, I just ruined that.”

Ortega: You cried?

Myers: I actually cried.

Ortega: Oh my goodness, no! If it makes you feel better, I made a bad choice, I took too long a pause.

Myers: That’s why I was like, “Oh, she forgot her line, I’ll jump in!”

Ortega: I was just trying to make you uncomfortable.

Myers: Well, it worked, and it’s fine. I think my reaction was pretty Enid-coded. But then in person, yeah, you did give me a hug and then we both awkwardly walked off in different directions to go do our different preparations on set.

Ortega: I had really terrible braids in. We were still discovering how to do the braids. They were hefty.

Myers: I was dressed in something really awkward because I was heading to the gym. I probably had on leggings and a flannel.

Ortega: That’s not awkward.

Myers: I’m going to ask you a question now. Enid and Wednesday are polar opposites, why does their friendship work despite their differences?

Ortega: I think their friendship works because of their differences. Sometimes you need someone to keep you tethered to the ground. Enid and Wednesday are both quite ambitious, driven, and slightly psychotic characters, so it’s easy to get stuck on a certain path or stuck on a certain train. But I think that we respect each other, and how strong the other is, and how sure of ourselves we both are in different ways. It’s a pretty rare quality to find in people. So the fact that we’re these two self-assured individuals who have found each other is ... well, I think we recognize how unique that is. That’s the first time I’ve given that answer.

JONATHAN HESSION/NETFLIX

Myers: That’s nice.

Ortega: We’re giving an exclusive here. Do you feel like we’re both more or less similar to our characters?

Myers: I feel like you are more similar to Wednesday than I am similar to Enid. We’ve been saying that for years now, and it’s still true.

Ortega: It is true. There’s not an ounce of you in Enid.

Myers: I see Wednesday in you, but me in Enid? Not too much. What’s your favorite scene or sequence that we shot together this season? Honestly, we didn’t get that many together in the first half.

Ortega: No we didn’t. We did not.

Myers: While we were filming I was like, “Wow, I feel like I haven’t seen Jenna in weeks.”

Ortega: For the first half of this season, we have so few scenes together. I wasn’t very happy. But before we shot this season, it was funny because we were both shooting other projects in New Zealand at the same time, for four months. And we got to see each other once.

Myers: Isn’t that crazy? I was shooting Minecraft.

Ortega: I was shooting Klara and the Sun. And we met up once in Auckland. We went to the beach — after you took me to that one beach, I kept going back. We went to a café, walked around a bit. Drove around a bit. We walked down the main strip. We may have gone into a bookstore or something.

Myers: Oh, yes. Yeah, we did do that.

Ortega: But we only saw each other once! So I think once we got to Ireland to film Wednesday, it was nice to actually see each other.

Myers: What a relief, to be back together on set. There’s no expectation, ever. And then we check in and it’s just understood that we’re happy to be back together. We know how we feel.

Ortega: How did it feel playing Wednesday this season in Episode 6 within the body swap storyline? What was the hardest part of stepping into her shoes?

Myers: I’m going to be so real: I was so scared. I wish I had had more time to prepare.

Ortega: From what I saw, it looked really good.

Myers: I had clips of you pulled up when we were filming. I enjoyed it because I didn’t have to use that much energy — it was actually a nice break. It’s totally different. Because when I’m playing Enid, I have to remind myself to keep moving. I can’t just sit still, I have to be doing something. Whereas playing Wednesday, if I even moved slightly, we’d have to restart. I kept getting told, “You have to stand very, very still.”

Ortega: You’re probably stiller than me, then, because I rock back and forth slightly. I shift.

Myers: I couldn’t go up and down the stairs as smoothly as you do.

Ortega: That takes practice. You have to be really still, but also you can’t look at the steps. Every once in a while you can do a quick glance, but I’m mostly guessing. It’s a shot in the dark every time.

Myers: What was it like for you playing Enid?

Ortega: It was really terrifying for me too. But as far as the story goes, I thought it was really beneficial for these two characters, especially since they’re not that close at the beginning of the season. Enid’s going through a huge shift in her life, and Wednesday has been knocked off her feet a bit. It was nice to be able to have an episode dedicated to the relationship between these two girls. I think it’s one of the strongest points of our show. But yeah, it was scary — I haven’t really had to do something like that in a while. And obviously, Emma, what you do with this character is so specific and so good — it’s so big, and bubbly, and bright. It requires a lot of physicality. I was shooting every day, I wanted to research and prepare more, but I was still practicing cello, and swordfighting—

Myers: You don’t have time, you don’t have time!

Ortega: I felt really unprepared, and I just had to go off of what I had seen you do.

Myers: You nailed it. If we could work on any other creative project together, TV show, movie, or whatever, what would you want it to be and why?

Ortega: I want to do a movie with you.

Myers: That would be fun.

Ortega: It would be nice. A different flow of things. I would probably get to see you more often. We’re done with the mystery. We both have had a lot of mystery. Too much mystery, too much of the thriller genre in our lives.

Myers: Too much mayhem. I’d love to do something serious with you.

Ortega: Because we’re both quite campy in Wednesday.

Myers: We are very campy in this. I would like to do something where I can play myself. That would be a fun adventure.

Ortega: How was the Greece trip? How was that adventure? I couldn’t go, I was shooting.

Myers: No, you couldn’t go. But a bunch of us went to Greece during filming, and it was lovely. We rented a place, rented some quad bikes, went on a boat ride, grilled outside, swam, had some nice dinners, went exploring. There were beautiful cafés along the ocean. It was nice to just take a minute and relax. It was also nice to be someplace warm for a week.

Ortega: Oh my God, amazing. What’s one thing you really want to happen in Season 3?

Myers: I actually do like the idea of going abroad for a mystery.

Ortega: I tried to pitch that idea.

Myers: What’s one thing you want to happen in Season 3?

Ortega: I would like to see the Addams family dealing with a bit less conflict. They’re a happy family. In Season 1 we saw a lot of Wednesday versus Morticia. And then in Season 2, Morticia versus Hester. I would love for them to just be the happy, disgusting, off-putting family that we know and love for a bit.

AB+DM/NETFLIX