Fans Divided Over Age Gap in Jenna Ortega’s New Movie ‘Miller’s Girl’ — ‘Older Than Her Actual Dad’

Run, don’t walk — the new trailer for Jenna Ortega’s, 21, upcoming movie “Miller’s Girl” just dropped. It portrays the actress as a young college student who forms an inappropriate relationship with her professor, played by English actor Martin Freeman, 52.

While the movie is slated for a January 26 movie theater release, it’s already stirring controversy on social media. Much of this has to do with Ortega’s character, Cairo, being 18 years old in the film.

Meanwhile, her professor, whom she shares an ambiguous connection with, is well into middle age. As per Deadline, the student and the creative writing teacher soon find themselves crossing “blurred lines.” Watch the trailer here:

As per the trailer, the movie depicts Cairo and her college professor, Mr. Miller, bonding over their love of literature. Ominous and mysterious in tone, the movie winds through Cairo’s experience of finding herself as an adult. She writes in her journal, “I’m 18, languishing in the wild in nowhere Tennessee.”

Later, Mr. Miller asks her, “Don’t you get scared walking through those woods?” She replies with a smile reminiscent of Ortega’s “Wednesday” character: “I’m the scariest thing in there.”

The trailer then shows how Mr. Miller starts showing Cairo “special treatment.” A friend later tells the protagonist: “Make him love you.” The student and teacher see each other outside of class, but it is unclear whether they cross the line physically in the film. At one point, the professor tells Cairo that one of her essays is “inappropriate,” telling her: “If you don’t rewrite this, I’ll have to fail you.”

And yes, as expected, tons of drama ensues.

From the trailer alone, it is not exactly clear what Mr. Miller does in the film, and who is the villain. At one point, Mr. Miller tells Cairo: “You are my student, and I am your teacher. That’s all.” He later explains anxiously to a colleague: “If she can convince them that something happened between us, I could lose my job.”

Cairo’s friend tells her in the trailer, “You’re going to ruin [Mr. Miller’s] life,” and we later see the student go to an administrator’s office and seemingly file a complaint.

Of course, we still have no idea what really happens in this movie by just the trailer alone. However, some social media users are worried that it will depict a woman falsely claiming to have been abused or sexually harassed.

As one X user wrote, “[I don’t know] how many more ‘Evil manipulative teenage girl lies [about] her teacher raping her for petty reasons’ stories I can take.”

Meanwhile, other X users are calling the protagonist’s age gap “disgusting,” while some put it like this: “If you think this sounds disgusting, yes that’s probably the entire point of the movie.”

Ortega’s upcoming movie ‘Miller’s Girl’ is already stirring controversy for its subject

Although we still only have the trailer to go on, “Miller’s Girl” is already starkly dividing opinions online. As you can expect, many people are shocked by Ortega and Freeman’s real-life age gap, especially if they are playing “love interests” in the film. As one X user wrote, they never would “have ever imagined” this film’s premise:

Another put it straightforwardly: “There’s no fictional universe I’d ever want to see that involves someone like Martin Freeman ‘falling for’ someone Jenna Ortega’s age.”

Many of the people who have read the leaked script (which may differ from the one used in the film) are not into it:

As one X user described, the leaked script allegedly shows that Cairo is 17 and in high school, while she is an 18-year-old college student in the film.

As yet another user wrote sarcastically, “Yay another movie about a teacher preying on their student, we really needed this.”

And yes, many people continue to say this entire premise “sounds creepy” to them:

However, not everyone is necessarily creeped out by the film. In fact, one user asked if this movie was “made” for them, referencing the “dark academia, inappropriate relationship, [and] hot Martin Freeman.”

Another X user wrote about loving both actors, so they will watch the film with an open “mindset”:

Another fan described feeling “shocked” at the movie’s plot, while still understanding Ortega’s potential to “kill” the role. “She likes to do complicated characters… This is a movie, not real life.”

Many still say an on-screen relationship between these two actors sounds “disgusting.” Still, one backtracked a bit: “If the movie is good, well, it’s fiction, people. Relax.”

Divided opinions aside, this still seems to be everyone’s reaction to seeing Freeman and Ortega star in the same film:

John Watson and Tara Carpenter? Our two universes may have just collided: