Beetlejuice Beetlejuice star Jenna Ortega has opened up on Tim Burton's hands-off approach to directing, and how she ensured her character wasn't just a rehash of the franchise's original teen, Winona Ryder's Lydia Deetz.
In the long-awaited sequel, which picks up with the Deetzes 36 years on from the original, Ortega plays Lydia's teen daughter Astrid. After their previous encounter with the titular ghoul, the family have found themselves in New York City – Astrid at boarding school, Delia (Catherine O'Hara) curating avant-garde art shows, and Lydia hosting a paranormal reality show called Ghost House. When Charles Deetz dies suddenly, though, the trio finds itself back at Winter River, navigating their tension-filled relationships as they start being, quite literally, haunted by their past.
"There actually weren't a lot of conversations with other people, which I think is really exciting and [the thing that's so] different about working with Tim, because usually you do have those conversations," Ortega tells 12DOVE and Inside Total Film, explaining how she brought Astrid to life. "I love being able to share and collaborate on ideas for a character, but Tim just kind of takes a step back and lets you do what you need to do.
"If you have questions or if you have concerns, he'll talk to you about them. But for the most part, we just kind of showed up and we did it," she smiles. "I didn't want [Astrid] to be Lydia, so I just made sure she had similar characteristics, like just being very self-assured and opinionated and very aware of who she was. The writers also did a wonderful job of establishing that for me, then it was more so just working with Catherine and Winona a lot of the time, and they're so great at what they do, and so nice and so comforting that I didn't have to worry about chemistry too much, everything just kind of fell into place."
O'Hara, who worked with Burton on the 1988 flick, had a similar experience. "We just winged the whole thing," she laughs, before adding: "No, it's so freeing to just be trusted in that way, to you know, just come in and do it. Of course, you've got the script to work with. But Tim is also really collaborative and really loose about letting you improvise, and encouraging that, and improvising himself. It's very creative. It's a very creative vibe."
In the first film, the ghost-seeing Lydia regularly clashes with her eccentric, screechy stepmother Delia, as the latter sulks about moving to the suburbs. In the follow-up, Astrid and Lydia have become semi-estranged since the death of Astrid's father, due to Lydia's busy schedule and former's lack of belief in all things otherworldly.
"It wasn't really discussed, but we all just knew that Delia and Lydia would be in a new place," says O'Hara. "And I think I got to show that I actually loved my husband. Delia was in a rough place in the first movie. He'd taken her from where she thinks she's comfortable; in the urban environment with her artist friends, well, people she thinks are her friends. She doesn't really have any friends. Nobody appreciates her art. Her husband paid for her gallery show that we see [in the sequel]. I'm sure that was never discussed. But, you know, you just make up stuff, help your own character."
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice releases on September 6. In the meantime, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming movies heading our way.
Listen out for more of our chat with Ortega and O'Hara on the upcoming episode of the Inside Total Film podcast, which is available on Apple, Audioboom, Spotify, and more.
