Ricardo Carpio's Magazine

Jenna ortega’s horror movies prove she’s the new scream queen

Scream’s Neve Campbell passes the torch to a new generation of scream queens in Scream 2022, with actress Jenna Ortega as the main lead. Being so young and having more horror roles on the way, Jenna Or tega is proving why she’s the new scream queen. At just 19-years-old, Ortega already has an impressive resume of horror films & TV shows under her belt.

Jenna Ortega was born in Coachella Val ley, Palm Desert, California, on Septem ber 27th, 2002. She began acting at six years old, but her first official role was a guest appearance in the television show Rob at 10-years-old. The following year, she had significant roles in films such as Iron Man 3 (2013) and the horror movie Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013). Soon after, she began having more mainstream roles, most notably in the Netflix horror drama You (2019) and starring alongside Maddie Ziegler in The Fallout (2021), which many critics noted as her “breakout role.”

Jenna Ortega’s horror movies prove she’s the new scream queen for several reasons. Not only are the number of horror roles she’s already gotten impressive, but her acting ability is remarkable. Insidious: Chapter 2 was only her second film ever. Although a minor role, being in such a popular franchise began her horror act ing abilities. In 2020, Ortega was in the black comedy/horror film The Babysitter: Killer Queen in a lead role. The movie is gory, bloody, hilarious, and sexual: pretty

much everything a teen horror movie should be. Following The Babysitter sequel, Jenna Ortega starred as the lead role (and new final girl) in Scream 2022. Whereas The Babysitter: Killer Queen and Scream 2022 are more horror-comedies, Ortega’s upcoming role in A24’s X looks like it’s a more serious horror film. Her portrayal in X is guaranteed to skyrocket Ortega’s scream queen roles to a new level.

Coming to theaters on March 18th, 2022, A24’s X is about adult filmmakers who travel to Rural Texas for their next movie. They stay at an elderly couple’s house, which quickly turns sinister. From the looks of the trailer, Ortega has a more mature role, with the con text of the film revolving around the adult film industry. Ortega is making her transition from teenager to adult. As her acting abilities get stronger, so will her roles. Ortega’s screams in the X trailer are bloodcurdling, and the film appears dark and somewhat disturbing, which falls in line with some of her recent work.

Jenna Ortega isn’t even 20-years-old yet and is already a force to be reckoned with, so it will be exciting to see what comes next for this emerging scream queen. That said, her acting roles are reminiscent of young Neve Camp bell and Jamie Lee Curtis, who have had continued impressive, long careers. With her upcoming roles in X and possibly Scream 6, which has now been confirmed to be in devel opment, Jenna Ortega proves she has what it takes to be the new Hollywood scream queen.

Selena Gomez Wasn’t Sure She was Ready

Selena Gomez has a lot of baggage. She says this is true both “literally and figuratively,” and she says it while I am rolling my own literal baggage across the threshold of her Los Angeles home, having first rolled it past the security gate, then up the verdant hill, then along the glimmer ing pool, before depositing it in a sort of glam room with a flowery rug and a view of the patio through open glass doors. By this point, I may be perspiring a bit. Gomez hugs me anyway, then scurries off down a hallway to confer with a young woman about the air conditioning. When she returns, she plops into a white leather salon-style chair and launches into a tale of how, just prior to my arrival, she’d been eating an acai bowl only to realize that “my entire face was purple.” The general vibe here is clear: We are human. We perspire. We get food stuck to our faces. We have baggage. Welcome. For a while now, one could say this has been a signature of Gomez’s appeal, this sort of wide-

armed embrace of the human condition. Her recent albums span an emotional register that begins at “personal” and ends somewhere around “crushingly confessional,” songs she says arrived via some alchemy of emotional messiness, Chinese takeout, and serious dish ing. “One day I walked in, and the producers were like, ‘How are you?’ And I was like, ‘I want a boyfriend.’ They were like, ‘Oh, should we write about that?’ I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And that’s the whole song: I want a boyfriend,” she says of “Boyfriend,” a standout on 2020’s all-around excellent Rare, an album that con tinues a years-long streak of dealing with her feelings amid irresistible pop hooks. It certainly was on her pandemic cook ing show, Selena + Chef, a master class in self-deprecation in which, at various mo ments, she nearly severs her fingers with a rainbow-hued knife, gags while chopping an octopus, and pulls something aflame out of

Ready To Tell This Story

the oven with a look of sheer horror on her face. Speaking of gagging, her beauty line, Rare, is one of the few purporting to “embrace inner beauty” that doesn’t trigger that reflex, in part because of its inclusivity (there are, famously, 48 shades of foundation), and in part because a portion of its proceeds go toward efforts to provide under served communities with access to mental-health services. Which brings us to the whole baggage thing. And here, it’s hard to know where to start. Maybe with the diagnosis of the autoimmune disease lupus, which is triggered by stress and necessitated Gomez getting a kidney transplant in 2017, after which the organ managed to flip itself over, causing grievous harm to an artery and requiring doctors to rush her into a six-hour surgery during which she very well could have died. So that’s … a lot, even if it weren’t paired with a series of highly publicized breakups with the likes of Justin Bieber and the Weeknd and a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, which she first shared with the world via a 2020 episode of Miley Cyrus’ Instagram Live show, Bright Minded. Meanwhile, she was popping up here and there to broadcast her allergy to bullshit, to make appeals for kindness and decency, and to rail against the ills of social media while at one point racking up more Instagram followers than any other human on the planet — a mindfuck if there ever were one. It’s difficult to think of another celebrity who has chafed against the trappings of fame so re latably, who has seemed so very conflicted, who has fought back tears so poignantly on so many stages (“I’m not a cute crier,” she’s been known to say, although of course she is).

In fact, the word “authentic” gets bandied about so frequently apropos Gomez that one could be forgiven for assuming that the depths have been plumbed — at least as much as she will publicly plumb them. But then there’s this: Selena Gomez: My Mind and Me, a documentary on Gomez’s struggle with mental illness that debuts Nov. 4 on Apple TV+. Any preliminary ideas that this might be a puff piece or vanity project are shat

tered five minutes in, when the mental anguish that caused Gomez to cancel her 2016 Revival tour early and check herself into a treatment facility is on full, painful, tearful display. The cameras do not stop rolling, and the next hour-plus provides one of the least sugarcoated explorations of mental illness one is likely to find on film. There are scenes in which Gomez is unable to get out of bed, scenes of her lash ing out at friends, scenes of her roaming her house aimlessly, scenes of her coming apart in the middle of a press tour, contemptuously responding to the media circus when she isn’t seeming to disassociate entirely.

The documentary is so raw that Gomez al most didn’t sign off on its release. “I’m just so nervous,” she says of that prospect, pulling her bare feet up onto the chair. “Because I have the platform I have, it’s kind of like I’m sacrificing myself a little bit for a greater purpose. I don’t want that to sound dramatic, but I almost wasn’t going to put this out. God’s honest truth, a few weeks ago, I wasn’t sure I could do it.”

ams Her Own In ‘Wednesday,’ And Keeping

The Horror Genre Alive

You really took this character to the next level. I spoke to Gwendolyn and she said that you embodied it effortlessly. How were you able to portray such an iconic character so spot on from the one we know, but also in such a unique way?

Yeah, it was really interesting doing this one because you want to do something different. You don’t want to be ripping off anybody else’s performance. But honestly, the ‘90s films made such an impact on the character Wednesday, the one that we know and love today. So I think that there was a part of my performance that I had to loop in bits and pieces that were reminiscent of the ‘90s ver sion and iteration and that draw, I don’t know, this group was also written very reminiscent of the ‘90s.

So I think for the older generations that know and love her, I had those bits and pieces, but for the newer generation and also the pure fact that we’ve never spent so much time with Wednesday on screen before, there has to be more dimension in order to push that story forward. So that’s when I had to slide in dif ferent undertones of feeling and reaction and maybe insecurities at some point. Just some thing to make her more relatable and ground her and kind of just show a different side to a character that we’d never seen before. She shows more of a softer side to her that maybe we haven’t really been familiar with. How were you able to showcase that and not lose the intensity that we know from Wednes day?

Oh, we had a lot of discussion and debate about this because I was always very protec tive and I never wanted to give too much or too little. And I’ve never seen Wednesday as someone to be into boys or to be into this.

But I think it’s easy when you have a younger figure like Eugene, because there’s something about little—I think Wednesday loves weak people and he was little and weak, but also a little strange and wasn’t afraid of that. So I think that she felt very protective of him. And then as far as Tyler goes, I think that that was just kind of an interesting endeavor for her. While she was busy figuring out this monster situation, I think it was just kind of for fun. I don’t think she really, she meant anything too seriously about it, which is also why being softer with someone when you’re getting to know someone on maybe a slightly less platonic level, you got to show sides of yourself because that makes it more interesting. Working with Christina Ricci on this—I’m so glad that she joined the project. What was it like working with the person who made this

character so iconic? Christina was really cool. We got along really well. She’s a really generous actress and I was definitely nervous to work with her just because of who she is and what she stood for and how much everyone sees her as Wednes day. But also she gave me space and room to do what I needed to do and I hope I did the same for her. And I would love to work with her again. She really is. I think we get on all right For sure. Tim Burton has been tied to an Add ams Family project of some sort since the ‘90s, and now is finally able to do this with you as the lead. What was it like working with him and help ing him bring this to life?

Yeah, I feel so lucky. He’s honestly such a sweet person and an incredible collaborator. He’s an ac tor’s director. He knows the way to communicate with people and I think I felt this overwhelming sense of trust and just partnership with him. And it’s not an easy combination or I don’t know. I think there are very few directors who know how to form communication to that level with an actor and he’s somebody who’s very good at that. And it was with someone with a background like his, for him to be so kind and so incredible, but then also just to be a part of his world and vision and see him drawing sketches and doing things like that for a project that I was involved in was just kind of surreal. And I think it’s an experience I’ll always cherish. I think that it was just really great. We’ve seen you on X and in Scream, you’re really keeping the horror genre alive. What is it about these projects that makes you drawn to them?

Well, something that I appreciate about horror is that it’s kind of keeping theaters alive. I feel like people really go out to the theaters nowadays for superhero films or horror films that you’re just giving people a good time. It’s adrenaline, it’s a roller coaster. I feel like horror is a large, just this conglomerate of genres in terms of, you have your horror and your action and then there’s comedy and then there’s drama and then there’s romance. I think that horror films are kind of everything at

once, and I think that that’s a really wonderful experience as an actor. But then also, yeah, I like having blood on my face and I like run ning and crying and screaming all day. It gives me a kick.

I think the character that pulls Wednesday out of herself the most is Enid, and I really love that dynamic between the two of you. How do you walk that line of refusing to be moved but maybe giving in just a little bit? It’s so easy to be moved by Emma Myers. It is so easy. She’s such a sweetheart, and Enid is such a ray of sunshine. And I think that’s scary to Wednesday, which is why she likes it. It’s very easy to toe the line with her, and I think that dynamic was very natural. Everyone knows that super sunny, happy per son and that super dark, depressing person. When they get together, there’s something really relatable and beautiful about it. Those are always my favorite dynamics, and I think it came very naturally.

Ariana Grande Just Dropped Two New Scents Inspired

By 60’S ModAesthetics

Ariana Grande has been on a roll with her beauty moves lately, dying her hair a mushroom blonde color for her upcoming role as Glinda in the Wicked film adaptation, and launching her very own makeup line, r.e.m beauty. And of course, who could forget her fragrance line, with scents like Cloud and God Is a Woman constantly going viral on TikTok. Now, the Grammy Award-winning artist adds another perfume to her repertoire with the release of her first-ever fragrance duo, Mod, launching December 1.

The Collection

The duo consists of two fragrances, Mod Vanilla and Mod Blush, which evoke boldness with their luxurious scents and modern design. “The Mod collection is an exciting evolution for the Ariana Grande fragrance portfolio,” ex plains Noreen Dodge, Chief Marketing Officer of Luxe Brands, who grande partnered with for the fragrances. “The way we crafted the scents represents what I feel is the future of perfumes; simplicity and luxury anchored to nature. The design, campaign, and fra grances are a delightfully modern twist for fans to enjoy.”

So, why two fragrances? Says Grande in a statement, “I really wanted to do something different and exciting for my fans by launching two new fragrances at once, and I so hope they love them the way my team and friends and I do.”

The Inspiration

“I’m beyond excited to launch my first ever double fragrance drop with Mod Vanilla and Mod Blush,” explains Grande. The brand shares that the inspiration

behind this collection stems from the British Mod subculture that was alive with bold colors and groovy de signs in London in the late ‘60s. If you need a reference for Mod culture, look to bands like The Beatles and icons like Twiggy. “The Mod bottle design is a modern toast to the post-mid-century fashion ethos,” says the brand. “[It’s] something bold and interruptive done in a sculptural way with form, light, subtle curves creat[ing] a rounded mod shape where no two sides look the same.”

Mod Vanilla

If you’re a fan of deep, decadent aromas, you’ll want to consider the Mod Vanilla Eau de Parfum. This fra grance contains top notes of plum, musks, and freesia for an instant splash of fruity and floral scents with depth. Mod Vanilla’s heart notes include orris butter and white praline, bringing rich warmth to the fragrance. In contrast, base notes of vanil la absolute, upcycled cocoa butter, and papyrus lingers

on the skin throughout the day.

Mod Blush

On the other hand, the Mod Blush Eau de Parfum offers a myriad of floral notes, turning this fragrance into a decadent wearable bouquet. The fragrance contains top notes of Italian bergamot, passion fruit, and dark raspberry for a fruity opening, and this fragrance’s heart of rose petals, magnolia, and pear offset sweet scents with their floral depth. To deepen this scent even further, ambrox, dreamwood, and musk base notes add a woodsy touch and ground this fra grance.

Trendy clothes

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How Did TikTok Star Noah Beck Get Famous?

In January 2020, while home in Arizona during winter break from the University of Portland, his sister, Tatum, introduced him to TikTok. “She had, like, 8,000 followers, and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a lot.’” Mr. Beck said. “I was the annoying little brother who was like, ‘I bet you in two weeks I’ll have more followers than

you.’”

He posted two videos, including a nine-second one in which he lipsynced vulgar rap lyrics from a Me gan Thee Stallion song. Shot in his bedroom with an iPhone, it had all the mundane markings of a suburban teenager’s life: white T-shirt, floppy hair, string lights, walls cov ered with photos and posters.

It went nowhere. But a few months later, when the pandemic shut down campus life everywhere, the video mysteriously took off. “When I woke up, I had 20,000 followers,” he said. “And each video had, like, 300,000 views. I thought it was a glitch.”

Today Mr. Beck, 21, has more than 34 million followers on Tik-

Tok, putting him a bit behind Kylie Jen ner (49.1 million) and a girlfriend of two years, Dixie D’Amelio (57.5 million) — more on that later. He has gone from being an anonymous college student training to be professional soccer player to a TikTok superstar who, in recent months, sat in the front row at Paris Fashion Week and played in a celebrity soccer match for UNICEF.

didn’t deserve me at all.”

GREEN,’

Omar Apollo

Embrasses His Inner Sad Core, And TikTok Can’t Get Enough.

That sense of relatability, paired with Apollo’s deft and elliptical flow, is what tipped the song to find a second life on TikTok some four months — and two tours — after it had been released in April as part of the album. Like most trends that catch fire on the app, the song’s form and function have taken different shapes throughout its virality; it started with one fan angrily belting the song’s bridge and has since soundtracked more than 380,000 videos.

When Omar Apollo finished recording “Evergreen (You Didn’t Deserve Me at All),” the 25-year-old did not expect it to become his first charting single. “I never thought it was going to be the song,” he tells Variety. “It meant so much to me, but I never imagined it would reso nate the way it has.”

For one, it was the last puzzle piece to the singer’s full-length debut album, “Ivory,” and it was also the song that took the most time to complete. Apollo’s musical prow ess is on full display on “Evergreen,” as he fluctuates from whisper to bellow, singing of unrequited love over sophisticated R&B runs. Lyrically, it’s as vulnerable a confes sion as one could make, but it shouldn’t be mistaken as a cry for help; instead, it’s an effort to make peace.

The Indiana-born musician especially took time honing its tear-jerking bridge: “You know you really made me hate my self / Had to stop before I break myself / Should’ve broke it off to date myself / You

“The TikTok boost amplified what I al ready knew but was confused about, and that was which kind of songs I want to make,” Apollo says. “I’m not saying that I’m going to be making music for a plat form, but when I’m on tour, singing and seeing people in the front row bawling, it becomes clear to me that those are the types of emotions I was trying to get to when I wrote that song.”

Today, Apollo has built a cult follow ing on that same philosophy. Songs like the corrido-inspired “Dos Uno Nueve (219)” from his nine-track “Apolonio” and the ranchera “En El Olvido” serve as homecoming calls for Latino people who attend his concerts in packs.

“Evergreen” received its visual counter part on Nov. 21 (a direct result of the song’s success on the app) and starred the singer. In it, Apollo builds and locks himself into a faux room that gradually begins to fall in on itself.

“That was 100% exactly where I was with my feelings,” he says. “I’ve been obsessed with Stanley Kubrick, and I’m just so happy it came out the way it did — not

just aesthetically, but also what we were able to translate.” Apollo is celebrating several bucket-list achievements, namely his first Grammy nom in the best new artist category at the 2023 awards and two Latin Grammy nominations. Before the nominations for the 65th annual Grammy Awards were released, the singer says he pleaded with his friends and manager to please “not make it a thing! – I don’t wanna be sitting there and not get nominated with everyone watching,” he explains before recalling what really happened: “I instantly had to use the bathroom, so I kicked everyone out and then I called my dad and he was like ‘Oh mijo, I’m so proud of you,’ and then my mom called me and was like ‘What are we wearing?’” Even then, Apollo feels as though not much has really changed. “At least within me,” he says. “Maybe sometimes I’m like, ‘Would a Grammy-nominated artist post this on his story?’,” he laughs. “But other than that, the same goal remains: Make the saddest music I could ever make in my whole life.”

Tenoch Huerta Mejía and the Beauty of Representation in ‘Wakanda

The Mexican actor’s breakthrough moment playing Namor in the “Black Panther” sequel is especially gratifying for the antiracism activist.

It was during an idle summer when he was 17 that Tenoch Huerta Mejía attended his first acting work shop. His father had signed him up, and just as he had been playing football since the age of 5 for fun, he thought of performing as no more than another amusing pastime, not a potential vocation.

“Becoming an actor was as far-fetched as it was for me to become a professional American football player from Mexico,” Huerta said in Spanish by phone from a moving car in Mexico City. “You can’t dream with what you can’t see. I didn’t see people with my skin color onscreen.”

But now, the Mexican star, 41, from the city of Ecate pec just outside the Mexican capital, has leveraged that first taste of the dramatic arts into a blossoming career that landed him the role of Namor, the flying ruler of the fictional underwater kingdom of Talo kan, in the superhero epic “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”

Representing his international breakthrough, the performance has been earning plaudits from critics. For The Hollywood Reporter, David Rooney commend ed Huerta’s “glowering demeanor and burly physi cality in the role,” while David Sims of The Atlantic praised how the actor infuses the character with “great dignity.”

For as long as Huerta can remember, the Mexican television and film industry has looked “like it’s made for Scandinavians,” as he put it. The productions mostly feature white Mexican or Latin American stars, while brown-skinned performers like him are relegated to subservient, criminal or generally dispar aging parts.

Thankfully, even when he wasn’t included in the

narrative, he took encouragement from his father’s unconditional trust. When he asked his dad why he had enrolled him in the acting class, the seemingly ambiguous response struck a chord.

“He told me, ‘I saw something in you,’” Huerta recalled. “For me the significance of that phrase was that my father was fully seeing me, that he had his eyes set on me always.”

Long before Marvel Studios put wings on his feet, Huerta had earned his stripes, working for more than 15 years on both sides of the border in acclaimed independent titles like “Sin Nombre,” “Güeros” and “Son of Monarchs.”

Still, Huerta admitted that he had often suffered from impostor syndrome as a result of the hostility that brown-skinned actors face in the Mexican entertain ment industry. The fact that he didn’t receive a formal acting education from a major institution also didn’t help.

A watershed moment came when Huerta was cast as the lead in the searing 2011 thriller “Days of Grace,” directed by Everardo Gout. To prepare for the demanding role of a police officer losing himself to violence, Huerta enlisted in the Ecatepec police academy without fellow cadets knowing he was doing research.

Not only did the visceral performance earn Huerta his first Ariel Award for best actor (the Mexican film academy’s equivalent to the Oscar), but it convinced him of his own hard-fought talent.

“That movie changed my life because it was where I first saw myself as an actor and started building my life around the fact that I was an actor,” he said. “Be fore that I couldn’t see it.”

Gout, who had first worked with Huerta on a video clip several years before, sees his friend’s rising profile as a personal victory.