Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara explain why ‘Beetlejuice’ sequel took so long: Jenna Ortega ‘had to be born’

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice finally hits theaters this weekend, but some special magic had to happen for the follow-up to Tim Burton’s beloved 1988 classic to take shape.

Burton brings back much of the cast for the sequel, with Michael Keaton returning as the titular demon trickster and Catherine O’Hara and Winona Ryder reprising their roles as Delia and Lydia Deetz, respectively.

But it was Jenna Ortega joining the original stars – playing Astrid, Ryder’s daughter and O’Hara’s granddaughter – who ultimately served as the lynchpin for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

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“Jenna had to be born, become an actress and work with Tim,” O’Hara said in a recent interview with CNN, explaining why the sequel took so long to “click”.

She went on to say that Burton “thinking of this young girl’s life from her point of view, I think going deeper into that” and “seeing what an amazing actress (Ortega) is” served as the inspiration the director needed for the sequel to materialise.

The Wednesday star wasn’t born for nearly 15 more years after the first Beetlejuice came out, and she didn’t see the original film until she was about nine years old in the mid-2010s, but Ortega was the perfect addition to long-awaited sequel.

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Ortega told CNN that Burton offered her the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice role while they were working together on the second season of Netflix hit show Wednesday, which is based on another dark and macabre franchise – namely The Addams Family. (The Beetlejuice sequel is written by the co-creators of Wednesday.)

“I just was having a meeting with him about Wednesday and he plopped the Beetlejuice script in my lap,” Ortega recalled, going on to add that she “just never anticipated” that she was going be a part of the project.

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“And then I read the script pretty much immediately, and obviously seeing Tim’s passion for it and having passion for not only the first film, but then the character Astrid herself, it just kind of felt like an almost instantaneous decision,” she said of taking on the role.

Reprising roles that helped catapult their careers back in the ’80s, Ryder and O’Hara said that returning to the world of Beetlejuice was fulfilling, both professionally and personally.

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“There’s just nothing like it,” Ryder shared. “It’s in its own genre. That is a testament to Tim,” she added of director Burton, who she said created a “whole genre” somewhere between thriller and comedy with “a lot of different things embroidered together.”

“It was really thrilling to get to go back to that,” she added. “It’s incredible to me that he was able to create that same energy of intimacy and freedom and trying new things.”

Ortega said she learned from both Ryder and O’Hara, whom she called a “comedy legend.”

“I feel like Winona has this quality to her that – I’ve never quite seen anything like it before,” the Scream VI star said of her onscreen Beetlejuice mum.

“Where someone could be so honest and vulnerable with their eyes, but still containing some sort of mysterious quality to her.”

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Since the sequel took more than 30 years to come together, it might be too early to consider a third film to complete a Beetlejuice trilogy, but the three women said they would be open to returning, should Burton have a third film up his sleeve.

After all, the only way to conjure the ghost with the most is to say his name three times. But here’s hoping it won’t take another three and a half decades for a threequel to happen.

“Yeah, I’d like to be alive in 30 years!” O’Hara quipped.

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