Jenna Ortega Speaks On Heritage Controversy With Fans

The crux of Jenna Ortega’s statements about her heritage is that she feels like a woman caught between two worlds. She is someone who “grew up smashing piñatas and making tamales at Christmas,” but she sometimes feels like she’s “not good enough…because I wasn’t born in a Spanish-speaking country.” In other words, she certainly feels connected to her family’s rich heritage, but she knows that her being born and raised in America and not speaking Spanish means that some will think she doesn’t measure up to some arbitrary standard.

Over the years, Jenna Ortega has privately struggled with how she feels about the matter, but the recent controversy over her heritage has transformed this into a very public struggle. She admitted that “I think there’s a part of me that carries a bit of shame” and that part of her “was almost nervous to speak about my family’s background” because she didn’t feel she was valid. The fact that she has downplayed her own heritage has fed some fans’ angry comments about her being a fake Latina, but the sad irony is that she worried more publicly speaking about the matter would make her seem fake.

With that being said, Jenna Ortega has spent a lifetime coming to grips with her cultural heritage, and she’s had some recent breakthroughs where she realizes that “it’s not my job to carry the weight of everybody who’s ever had that experience” of moving to America and trying to assimilate. Speaking of which, she believes that assimilation is a very authentic Latino experience and that everyone does it somewhat differently. Her own experiences, then, aren’t a yardstick for measuring her cultural authenticity … they are, simply put, her own experiences.

Throughout the interview, Jenna Ortega seemed very thoughtful and introspective about her own heritage and how others perceive it, but the “fake Latina” accusations arguably never really deserved a rebuttal in the first place. From the beginning, this seemed like a way for haters to create artificial cultural qualifiers as a way of taking a celebrity down a peg when she is on the rise. And, as with all weird internet discourse, much of the vitriol directed toward Ortega had already found purchase with other perceived targets by the time she spoke up.

One thing’s for sure: no amount of hand-wringing over Jenna Ortega’s heritage is going to negatively impact her Hollywood career. She stars in Tim Burton’s long-awaited Beetlejuice sequel, one which has already been scaring up some serious profit and boffo critical reviews in its first week of release. With the second season of Wednesday likely landing next year, this unstoppable celebrity’s career is perhaps best described by Beetlejuice himself: “it’s showtime!”

Source: Vanity Fair