Jewish actresses and scream queens are seemingly a match made in heaven. (Or hell, since we are talking about the horror genre here.) The queen of all scream queens is Jamie Lee Curtis, known for playing Laurie Strode in “Halloween” and for her commitment to her paternal Jewish ancestry. Arguably, Neve Campbell (who played Sidney Prescott in “Scream”) is the next most recognizable scream queen and (though she is a practicing Catholic) she is descended from Sephardic Jews.
More recently, however, a new Jewish scream queen has come on to the scene: Victoria Pedretti.
Here are 18 things to know about Victoria Pedretti.
1. Victoria was born on March 23, 1995 in Philadelphia to a non-Jewish father and a Jewish mother.
2. Her mother (whose mother was Jewish) began to explore her own Jewish identity as an adult.
“My mom grew up in a situation where there was a huge pressure to assimilate, and her father wasn’t very supportive of her learning anything about her Jewish identity,” Victoria said in an interview. “So she kind of pursued that later in life when she was in her 50s and I would’ve been in elementary school.”
3. Victoria was diagnosed with ADD when she was a child. Listen to her talk about how that label and the stigma around it affected her:
4. She had a bat mitzvah!
5. She was in an all-Jewish production of “Seussical” apparently?!
Absolutely flexing once again, but please enjoy this photo of me and Victoria Pedretti😂 we did an all Jewish production of Seussical together in like 2010? pic.twitter.com/TOvfifro1h
— bisexual vodka mermaid (@SteckYourself) October 11, 2020
We need more deets, stat!
6. She graduated from Carnegie Mellon School of Drama in 2017.
7. The way Victoria understands her Jewishness is through the principles of tikkun olam and pikuach nefesh.
“From the way in which I was taught to relate to my identity it has a lot to do with a sense of duty in terms of cultivating healing in the world and prioritizing life above all else,” she explained on the Podcrushed podcast.
8. Her breakthrough (and first professional) role was as Nell Crain in “The Haunting of Hill House.” She starred alongside fellow Jewish actors Michiel Huisman, Oliver Jackson-Cohen and Kate Siegel.
9. She later starred in the follow-up series “The Haunting of Bly Manor.” If you have any questions about the series, she probably answered them here:
10. In spite of being a scream queen, Victoria is a self-described “scaredy cat.”
11. Her first major movie role was in the Quentin Tarantino film “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.”
12. Victoria and her cat Cayenne are quite simply a vibe.
13. If she weren’t an actress, she would make a fantastic ASMRtist.
14. She looks great in a Star of David!
a reminder that victoria pedretti is jewish 💖 pic.twitter.com/QwxpS2LckP
— sari | ia (@smoIsoftg4y) December 14, 2020
15. Victoria felt some pressure in joining the cast of “You.”
“Coming into a show that already existed and that I already loved and care about is in some ways nerve-wracking because you don’t want to be the squeaky wheel,” she told Harper’s Bazaar.
16. She had a very brief and fun cameo in Chris Fleming’s stand-up special “HELL”:
17. Victoria voices Andie, the main character of an audio erotic series called “Compromised.” (P.S., it has the sapphic side of Twitter losing its collective mind.)
Listen here for a somewhat NSFW snippet:
Compromised, a Quinn Original audio erotica series voiced by Victoria Pedretti, is LIVE. Listen to Episode One now on the Quinn app. pic.twitter.com/Rlf9QKjF0X
— Quinn (@tryquinn_) September 22, 2023
Oo la la!
18. Victoria stars in Ava DuVernay’s latest movie “Origin,” a film dramatization of Isabel Wilkerson’s book “Caste.”
