Jenna Ortega‘s first order of business as the future “Saturday Night Live” host is to avoid the “teenage purgatory” of performing the legendary “Wednesday” dance for the umpteenth time.
Of course, in a new “SNL” teaser released on Wednesday, Ortega looks at a script while speaking with the Please Don’t Destroy Boys comedic trio of Ben Marshall, John Higgins, and Martin Herlihy.
“Honestly, this is really nicely written; I just don’t feel like doing the ‘Wednesday‘ dance for publicity because we’ve seen so much of that already, and I think it’s time to try something else,” Ortega adds.
The PDD Boys agree with Ortega until the camera pans out and shows them dressed “down to the frill” in Wednesday Addams-inspired black skirts and braided wigs. Ortega finally agrees to go through with their poorly disguised desire to do the “Wednesday” dance after they claim they don’t know it at all and have no intention of filming it for the promo.
In true Wednesday Addams flair, Ortega performs a sample of the dance on the historic “SNL” stage between Higgins and Marshall, while Herlihy films the occasion on a smartphone.
The “Wednesday” dance took on a life of its own when the sequence aired in the Netflix program late last year and went viral on social media.
The “SNL” commercial follows an interview in which Ortega discussed how she frequently changed her character’s lines during the production of “Wednesday,” which elicited varied reactions from individuals in the television industry.
“SNL” airs live on NBC on Saturday at 11:30 p.m. EST/8:30 p.m. PST and streams live on Peacock. This week’s host is Ortega, and the musical guest is The 1975.