Jenna Ortega, alongside the cast and crew of Netflix’s hit series Wednesday , spent around six months filming the show in Romania, a southeastern European country known for its fortified churches, castles, and unique gastronomy.
Although many people love to try new foods and cultures, this nation’s cuisine gave Ortega some challenges as, at the time, she was vegan. Jenna had to change her diet and include fish.
© GettyImages“I was vegan for a really long time,” the actress told Wired. “But I stopped being vegan when I went to Romania to shoot Wednesday.”
“The food is very different there and I don’t think that I was meeting my nutrition requirements so I started eating fish again. So I’m currently pescatarian,” she revealed.
Romanian’s everyday diet includes tripe soup, meat rolls, Radauti (sour chicken) soup, and more dishes with meat. Therefore, following a vegan diet while filming was hard.
© GettyImagesJenna told the New York Times, that her vegetarian diet includes avocado rolls. “I went vegetarian, and any time people asked me what my favorite food was, I’m so indecisive I couldn’t give them an answer,” she told the outlet.
“So I would say, ‘Oh, I love avocados.’ And people would say, ‘But that’s not a meal.’… You know how kids always go with chicken tenders and French fries? Those are my chicken tenders and French fries.”
But food wasn’t the only issue she faced abroad. While taking long hours of cello, German, fencing, and stunt work lessons, taking a hot shower wasn’t an option. The Latina star, told Interview Magazine that she never had access to hot water. “People were going down with COVID left and right,” she revealed.
“The entire cast never had any hot water. The boilers in two of my apartments were broken, so I always took cold showers. Everything was closed because you couldn’t do anything. It feels like we survived something. I wear that as a badge of honor now. I won’t be able to compare that to anything else,” she told the publication.
