Jenna Ortega is still perplexed by one particular rumor — and is once again shutting it down.
The “Wednesday” star went viral last summer after celebrity gossip account Deux Moi falsely reported that she and fellow actor Johnny Depp, 61, were spotted on a date. While both parties denied it immediately, the rumor still baffles Ortega.
“It’s so insane to me,” the actor, 21, told BuzzFeed, HuffPost’s parent company, in a puppy-laden interview on Monday.
“I was on set with Richard E. Grant, and he came up to me and he just said, ‘Oh, so you and Johnny?’” Ortega explained, referring to their upcoming “Death of a Unicorn” collaboration. “And I laughed because I… I don’t know that person.”
Ortega has been a professional actor for more than a decade but landed her breakthrough role in the gothic Netflix series “Wednesday,” which was produced and partially directed by Tim Burton, whose 1990 film “Edward Scissorhands” helped make Depp a star.
Those few degrees of separation — and the 23-year age gap between Depp and his ex Amber Heard — presumably made the Deux Moi rumor more believable. Plus, there was chatter that Depp would star opposite Ortega in “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.” But Depp’s spokespeople responded to the gossip item almost immediately after it went viral in 2023.
“Mr. Depp has no personal or professional relationship with Ms. Ortega whatsoever,” a representative for the actor told NME last August. “He has never met her or spoken to her. He is not involved in any project with her, nor does he intend to be.”
Left: Vianney Le Caer/Associated Press; Right: Vianney Le Caer/Invision/Associated Press
The actor’s representative concluded by stating that Depp was “appalled by these baseless and malicious rumors that are intended to harm his reputation and career,” suggesting that the rumor was too much to let linger after his polarizing defamation trial in 2022.
Ortega herself reportedly denied the rumor in a since-deleted Instagram Story last year, but told BuzzFeed on Monday that her first flame was quite a bit older than she: “I always say my first crush was Barack Obama … it was during his first election, and I was smitten.”
Ortega will soon be seen in Burton’s “Beetlejuice” sequel, in which she plays the daughter of a character previously portrayed by Winona Ryder, who famously dated Depp in the early 1990s.