(CNN) — Jenna Ortega had a bone to pick while appearing on the talk show “Hot Ones” in an episode that premiered Thursday.
Asked by host Sean Evans if there’s a recurring Gen Z theme or teen stereotype seen on TV that bothers her, the 20-year-old actress said she feels like “it’s always the spoiled teen, the foul-mouthed teen, or a whole bunch of sometimes unintelligent, which I don’t think is true.”
Ortega noted that she looks “a bit younger,” which is why she has played a teenager in most of her roles over the past decade.
Perhaps the best-known teenager Ortega has played is the deadpan Wednesday Addams on Netflix’s hit series “Wednesday,” for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe earlier this year. Prior to “Wednesday,” she starred in the Disney Channel series “Stuck in the Middle” as Harley Diaz, a teenager living life as a middle child. That program ran from 2016 to 2018.
Ortega is also an end girl in one of the biggest teen-focused franchises in recent Hollywood memory, having appeared in last year’s “Scream” and will soon return in this month’s “Scream VI,” co-starring Hayden Panettiere, Melissa Barrera and O.G. Courteney Cox, the queen of the “Scream” of the 90s.
With all her experience playing various teen roles, Ortega said on “Hot Ones” that she wishes her generation “would be given a little more credit.”
“Sometimes we can be smart,” she added, barely flinching at the hot sauce-covered wings she was eating on the famous chat show.
