Michael Keaton explains how Jenna Ortega made new 'Beetlejuice' movie happen

NEW YORK – Michael Keaton doesn’t like to overthink things. But he does have a theory to share regarding his new “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” co-star Jenna Ortega.

For decades, he and director Tim Burton have been noodling a follow-up to their beloved 1980s horror comedy hit “Beetlejuice.” Nothing felt right until Burton worked with Ortega on the 2022 Netflix series “Wednesday.” 

“She literally didn't exist” in 1988, Keaton reminds Burton during a group sitdown at the swank Essex House. “She gets born, you end up doing a thing with her. Then you go, wait a minute. Her? It? If she's not around, we may never make this thing.”

“We had to wait for you to live,” Catherine O’Hara chimes in, making Ortega, 21, crack a smile. “The powers have shifted in the room,” she quips.

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When the “Beetlejuice” braintrust gets together to chat about the long-awaited sequel (in theaters Friday), it’s both a fun hang and therapy session. For example, Keaton reveals that he went incognito to Burton’s show at the Museum of Modern Art and almost fell into some prized pieces: “I was so afraid I was going to break something.” And Burton digs into his connection with Winona Ryder’s character Lydia Deetz and her journey “from cool teenager to troubled adult. It made the whole movie very personal and very important and emotional,” the director says.

The secret sauce in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is not the return of Keaton’s rascally title trickster but instead three generations of Deetz women. A death in the family leads Lydia to reunite with her estranged daughter Astrid (Ortega) and eccentric stepmother Delia (O’Hara). Naturally, she has a return date with Beetlejuice as Afterlife shenanigans are afoot, but Lydia also needs to rediscover the confident goth girl she once was to best connect with Astrid. 

“I couldn't have made this movie in 1989,” says Burton, 66. “You only know that true life experience after the twists and turns that you take and the emotional baggage that we all collect.”

Winona Ryder, Jenna Ortega bond as 'Beetlejuice' mother and daughter

Ryder, 52, was struck by her fond memories of the attic set from the first film that returns in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” “I just love it up there. I always pictured Lydia would live up in the attic and be like a happy spinster,” the actress says. Lydia being a mom is a pretty new concept for her: In a 2022 USA TODAY interview promoting “Stranger Things,” Ryder figured children “would be the last thing she would want.”

That tracks for Ortega even now. “The whole thing with Lydia and Astrid is that they don't really connect,” she says. And when Ryder thought about what became of Lydia, “I did not picture her pregnant or even in love. But it was just magic when I met Jenna.”

Ryder recalls a “sweet” moment between Lydia and Astrid in the attic that then turns, and the mom yells at her daughter: “I don't have kids so I was like, 'That feels like too much,' and (Burton’s) like, ‘Trust me.’ ”

“You were light on her,” Burton says. Ryder admits to him, “I never thought you would have kids,” and the father of two deadpans, “No, me neither. In fact, the tests are not done yet.”

Michael Keaton is the 'original Ken' and forever Beetlejuice

All this talk of emotional growth leads to Keaton, 73, wanting to chat about his character. “I think Beetlejuice matured a lot,” he jokes. 

He hasn’t exactly evolved, still spilling his guts – intestines on the floor and everything – for a cheap scare and leaning on chicanery to try and get with Lydia again. Making the first movie, "we were always reluctant to show too, too much," Burton says. "He's an off-kilter character that needs to stay that way. You don't want to know him.”

O'Hara sees "a vulnerability that wasn't there" before, thanks to Beetlejuice's resurrected vengeful spouse Delores (Monica Bellucci) wanting to make him deader than he already is. The concept of Beetlejuice having an ex-wife “makes me laugh,” he says, the same way “the phone fell out of my hand” when Pixar called him to voice Ken in “Toy Story 3.” (Because of the “Barbie” movie, Keaton now wants to have a T-shirt made that says, “The Original Ken.”) 

As the newcomer acting alongside Keaton in full ‘Juice mode and other colorful Afterlife denizens, “my job was made very easy,” Ortega says. "It's hard not to get into the world when you have people with mold on their teeth and some guy who's trapped in a box full of water, trying to hand you a key the whole take." She also got a sense of the undying love for “Beetlejuice” when filming in the same Vermont town where Burton shot the first movie: “There were people coming up showing me photo albums with Tim's signature in them.”

Tim Burton's 'Beetlejuice' sequel fans the flames of nostalgia

“Beetlejuice” has never really left the public consciousness – a popular cartoon series and a Tony-nominated Broadway show helped, obviously, but O’Hara, 70, sees a strong nostalgia factor. Fans whose parents let them see the movie as kids are now at the age “where you look at those times in your life and you remember them fondly,” she says. 

Keaton finds the original movie’s inherent weirdness a major part of its endearing charm.

“If you think about what it is, it's so (expletive) nuts, but beautiful and crazy (with) the sensibilities and the things that it makes you talk about, like death and darkness and sandworms,” Keaton says. “That average guy from Minnesota or Kansas goes, ‘Oh, yeah, I love Beetlejuice.' You get certain movies – of course, people are going to respond to that movie. This one, people like it so much – what are we really tapping into?

“By the way, I don't really analyze these things,” Keaton adds with a chuckle. “There's just nothing you can compare it to. Ever.”