Even if you’re one of the increasingly few who haven’t seen Netflix’s hit macabre dramedy Wednesday, you’ve probably already seen one of its most-talked-about scenes.
Footage of Jenna Ortega getting down on the dance floor to The Cramps‘ “Goo Goo Muck” is everywhere on social media, but as she explains to NME, the viral dance was literally viral: The actress had COVID-19 when she performed it.
She tells the publication, “[I]t’s crazy because it was my first day with COVID so it was awful to film … I woke up and — it’s weird, I never get sick and when I do it’s not very bad [but] I had the body aches.”
She continues, “I felt like I’d been hit by a car and that a little goblin had been let loose in my throat and was scratching the walls of my esophagus. They were giving me medicine between takes because we were waiting on the positive result.”
The actress explained of the quirky dance itself, “I’d gotten the song about a week before, and I just pulled from whatever I could.”
Jenna reportedly cribbed moves from vintage footage of teens bopping during the New Wave craze, for one. “I choreographed that myself,” Ortega tells the publication. “I’m not a dancer, and I’m sure that’s obvious.”
Of the final result, she explained, “I asked to redo it, but we didn’t have time. I think I probably could have done it a bit better.”
Not sure how that could be: Apart from countless reposts and remixes from fans all over social media, Netflix’s official video of the dance has more than 10 million views on YouTube alone in less than two weeks.
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