Most celebrities use a late-night interview to promote a project. Jenna Ortega used hers to confess that she once went trick-or-treating as a rock. The 24-year-old actress appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers on Monday, October 19, 2026, and told host Seth Meyers that Halloween is her favourite holiday — a fact that will surprise absolutely no one who has watched her rule spooky season in Beetlejuice and in Wednesday, the hit Addams Family series. But it was her story about a childhood costume that stole the segment.
As Ortega told it, one year she decided to dress as a rock. Not a rock star — a rock. The costume was entirely homemade: she took a big block of styrofoam, sourced from Hobby Lobby, and spray-painted it to resemble stone. There was, however, a design flaw. A grey block of foam, it turns out, does not immediately read as “rock” to the average neighbour handing out candy. So young Ortega added the finishing touch that has since made the story famous: a headband that said “rock,” so that people would know what she was supposed to be.
(Harald Krichel / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0))The Headband That Explained Everything
The detail is funny on its own, but it is also a small masterpiece of practical thinking. Rather than abandon the costume or spend the night explaining herself, Ortega simply labelled it. Meyers, clearly delighted, responded with a childhood confession of his own: his father once made him a costume of a bag of trash, which people kept mistaking for a pile of leaves. His mistake, Meyers joked, was that he did not have a headband that said “garbage.” The exchange turned a standard promotional interview into one of those late-night moments that travels far beyond its broadcast, powered by the simple charm of two people comparing gloriously terrible costumes.
For Ortega’s fans, the story fits a persona they already love. The star of Wednesday has built her image on a genuine enthusiasm for the macabre — she is the rare young celebrity who seems to actually enjoy the dark corners she is famous for exploring. A childhood spent spray-painting foam into geology is entirely on brand. So is the craftsmanship: long before she was headlining productions like Beetlejuice, she was apparently a committed DIY costumer, willing to commit to a concept even — especially — when the concept made no sense to anyone else.
From The Addams Family to a Foam Block
There is a nice symmetry in Ortega telling Halloween stories in October. As Wednesday Addams, she has become the face of a new generation’s relationship with The Addams Family, the beloved clan of cheerful ghouls whose entire existence is a Halloween that never ends. The role demands deadpan; the talk-show story reveals the enthusiast underneath it. Meyers’ show has a talent for drawing out this side of its guests, but Ortega made it easy, recounting the rock costume with the pride of someone who still thinks it was a great idea. Honestly, she may be right.
(Ariela Ortiz-Barrantes / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0))The rock was not her only ambitious costume, either. As the conversation noted, her past Halloween efforts include a recreation of Björk’s famous 2001 Oscars swan dress and a turn as the Invisible Man — a range that spans avant-garde fashion history and classic horror in a single wardrobe. Most people peak at “witch, again.” Ortega was curating.
(Margaret Gardiner / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0))With Halloween days away, the timing could not be better. Somewhere out there, a young fan is right now standing in a craft-store aisle, holding a block of styrofoam and a can of grey paint, preparing to honour their favourite holiday in the most committed way possible. Thanks to Jenna Ortega, they know the most important part of the costume isn’t the rock. It’s the headband that says so.
A Star Who Actually Loves the Holiday
There is a difference between a celebrity who plays spooky characters and one who is genuinely fluent in the culture of the spooky, and audiences can always tell. Ortega’s fluency shows in the specifics: the costume was not rented, not styled, not focus-grouped — it was built at home, imperfectly, with total sincerity, and improved on the fly when reality failed to cooperate. That is the authentic grammar of Halloween as children actually live it, where the gap between the costume in your head and the costume on your body is closed with paint, tape and labelling. Hearing a star of her magnitude describe that process without embarrassment — indeed, with visible pride in the engineering — is precisely why the clip has been shared so warmly.
It also quietly explains her casting. Directors looking for a young performer who could carry gothic material without winking at it found an actress who had been preparing for the genre since childhood, one foam block at a time. The rock story, the swan dress, the Invisible Man: read in sequence, they are less a list of costumes than a syllabus. Ortega did not stumble into becoming her generation’s Halloween ambassador. She apprenticed for it, every October, in a craft-store aisle.
None of this, it should be said, was the planned headline of her appearance. Talk-show segments are built to sell a series or a film, and Ortega duly did her professional duty. But the internet has a long tradition of ignoring the intended message and adopting the truest one, and the truest thing she said all night was that she was once a rock. The clip will now live in that special archive of late-night moments that resurface every October, introduced by people saying: you have to see this. They are right. You do.
It helps, too, that the story arrives with a built-in visual that anyone can picture instantly: a small grey block, wobbling door to door, wearing its own caption. Great anecdotes survive on exactly that clarity, and this one will be retold at office parties and family dinners all week by people who were not even watching the show.