Jenna Ortega Addresses Controversy Over ‘Miller’s Girl’ Sex Scene

Jenna Ortega is addressing the controversy that surrounded the subject matter of her film Miller’s Girl.

Some audiences expressed concern regarding the dynamics depicted between the characters portrayed by the actress, now 21, and costar Martin Freeman, 52, in Miller’s Girl, which was released in January and is now streaming on Netflix.

In a Vanity Fair cover story, the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice actress pointed out, “It’s not supposed to be a comfortable movie. It’s supposed to be awful at times.”

“Art isn’t always meant to be pleasant or happy and everyone skips off into the sunset at the end,” Ortega added. “We all have f—ed up experiences at one point or another.”

Miller’s Girl starred Ortega as an 18-year-old high school student named Cairo who grows close with her writing teacher, a struggling author whom her friends suggest she try to seduce.

Freeman previously addressed the age difference dynamic in the film while speaking with the U.K. outlet The Times in April, when he described the movie as “grown-up and nuanced.”

“It’s not saying, ‘Isn’t this great?’ ” Freeman said at the time. “Are we gonna have a go at Liam Neeson for being in a film about the Holocaust?”

Back in February, Kristina Arjona, an intimacy coordinator who worked on Miller’s Girl, told The Daily Mail that Ortega and Freeman felt comfortable with sex scenes they performed for that movie.

“There [were] many, many people throughout this process engaging with [Jenna] to make sure that it was consistent with what she was comfortable with, and she was very determined and very sure of what she wanted to do,” she said at the time.

Ortega will next appear on the big screen in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, as well as the upcoming second season of her Netflix series Wednesday. While Ortega did not reveal much about the upcoming movie’s story, she expressed a significant level of appreciation for working with director Tim Burton, as well as costars Winona Ryder, Willem Dafoe and Michael Keaton.

“Every time I walked onto that set, I wanted to remember it for the rest of my life,” she told Vanity Fair.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in theaters Sept. 6.