Speaking during a recent interview on MTV about her new, upcoming movie, a Beetlejuice remake called “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” Hollywood actress Jenna Ortega spoke out about women in Hollywood and where progress has been made, saying that though women’s position has improved, she finds the idea of a “Jamie Bond,” or female Bond protagonist, ridiculous.
Particularly, Ortega argued that actresses should build and act in their own movie franchises that make sense for them as actresses and that it is ridiculous for studios to try to just swap women into movie roles previously played by men exclusively, as those are masculine roles that don’t make sense for the women who would be swapped into them.
Ortega’s comments on the issue of a “Jamie Bond” or like movie or role came in the context of describing female leads in movies. She said, “I love that there’s a lot more female leads nowadays, I think that’s so special, but we should have our own. I don’t like it when it’s like a spinoff — I don’t want to see, like, ‘Jamie Bond.’ You know? I want to see another bada**.”
Ortega also spoke about the idea of remaking Edward Scissorhands and why it wouldn’t work in the way that the Beetlejuice remake she is in does, saying, “The beauty of something like Edward is that it’s very sensitive. Beetlejuice can be original because he doesn’t exist in a specific time. You could make an anthology or go to the future.”
Further, Ortega commented, during the MTV interview, on loving sci-fi franchises and hasn’t made it through the highly-popular “Stranger Things” on Netflix, saying, “I’ve been so bad about Stranger Things. Because obviously, it all came out. And it was a huge deal, it still is a huge deal. I love sci-fi, I love it when it could be done well. I did not make it past the first season.”
She added that she tends to not really make it through TV shows even over a space of years, telling MTV, “So it’s been a couple of years because I’m bad with TV. The reason I say this is because I don’t want to be questioned on it later and embarrass myself. So let it be known that, whenever that first came out, that was the last.”
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There likely won’t be a “Jamie Bond,” as James Bond director Barbara Broccoli told the Hollywood Reporter in 2021 much the same thing as Ortega told MTV, saying, “I think [the next James Bond] will be a man because I don’t think a woman should play James Bond. I believe in making characters for women and not just having women play men’s roles.”
Barbara Broccoli did suggest, however, that there could be a non-white James Bond, though not a female one, telling the Hollywood Reporter, “I don’t think there are enough great roles for women, and it’s very important to me that we make movies for women about women. He should be British, so British can be any [ethnicity or race].”
Featured image credit: By Chris Roth – https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisroth1/52535124679/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=131799305