Beetlejuice‘s Lydia Deetz Didn’t End Up Where Winona Ryder Expected

While we don’t yet cognize the afloat crippled of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, we are precise acquainted with several of its main players, acknowledgment to the enduring popularity of the 1988 original. In the decades since its release, Winona Ryder had formulated an thought of wherever her character—teenage goth icon, shade whisperer, and Harry Belafonte instrumentality Lydia Deetz—ended up. But erstwhile Tim Burton approached her with the sequel, she was amazed to find their imaginations didn’t instrumentality the aforesaid path.

“I would anticipation there’s that happening of wanting to support the essence of the archetypal one, but past ideate this full beingness that’s happened,” Ryder told Entertainment Weekly successful a caller interview. “I ne'er thought astir Lydia ever being a mom. I thought she would conscionable beryllium this spinster by prime successful that attic, but I deliberation that’s wherever the unthinkable Jenna Ortega comes in. She answered a ton of those questions, and it felt truthful right.”

Wednesday prima Ortega plays Lydia’s daughter, Astrid; different caller Beetlejuice Beetlejuice character, played by Justin Theroux, is Rory—Lydia’s fellow and a TV shaper who’s presumably down her hosting a paranormal-themed amusement called Ghost House. From the trailers and images we’ve seen of the sequel truthful far, it’s wide that portion Lydia has recovered her mode into definite aspects of adulthood (being a mom, having a career), she’s inactive holding onto her signature horror-core fashions, arsenic good arsenic those unmistakable spiky bangs.

Even beyond conscionable Lydia, Ryder told the mag that Burton has been continuously fascinated with the Beetlejuice characters, successful a benignant of “where are they now?” benignant of way. “I conscionable retrieve each twelvemonth oregon two, we’d get together,” she said to EW. “And, you know, he’d gait astir and beryllium like, ‘This isn’t similar a sequel. It’s conscionable similar things hap successful life, and I truly privation to cognize what’s going connected with them now.”

Catherine O’Hara, who returns arsenic Lydia’s stepmother Delia Deetz, had a akin take: “A small miss similar that successful that archetypal Beetlejuice movie, you wonder, wherever bash they spell successful life? What mistakes bash they make? What bash they do? Where are the relationships? He was precise fascinated by that and household and the transportation of the 3 women.”

The remainder of the formed includes, of course, Michael Keaton arsenic the rubric bio-exorcist, arsenic good arsenic Willem Dafoe arsenic a bull successful the afterlife, and Monica Bellucci arsenic Beetlejuice’s ex-wife, Delores.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice hits theaters September 6.

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