Jessica Biel has already stabbed a man to death for mysterious reasons and (allegedly) murdered her neighbor. In her latest TV series, she’s playing another troubled woman: a high-profile media executive who may or may not have killed her husband.
slight scandal when she did a racy photoshoot for Gear magazine), Biel ended up leaving the show early to attend Tufts University in Massachusetts, appearing only occasionally on the hit show for the remainder of its 11-season run.
Still, Biel appeared in 1346 episodes of 7th Heaven altogether—spending many of her teen years making the show. Maybe that’s why, for years, she thought she’d never return to TV. “When I was coming up in this business, you were either a television actor or a film actor, you very rarely did a crossover,” she says. Biel says Friends star Jennifer Aniston was one of the few examples of an actor who successfully bounced between the big and small screen. “She was my idol,” says Biel. “I was like, Oh my God, if only I could do this the way she’s doing it.”
After she headlined the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Hollywood suddenly saw Biel in a new light. “I jumped into a whole different genre than anything you’d ever seen me do before, and I feel like that was probably what got people to stop thinking about me as just a kid who was on TV,” she says. For years afterward, she focused on her movie career, doing big-budget projects like 2004’s Blade: Trinity with Wesley Snipes; ensemble comedies like 2010’s Valentine’s Day and 2011’s New Year’s Eve; and independent films like 2013’s The Truth About Emanuel and 2016’s A Kind of Murder. “I was like, I’m never going back to television ever. I’m never doing that,” she says.
Then her business partner Michelle Purple asked Biel to consider the streaming world. New platforms had opened up new opportunities; she wanted their production company, Iron Ocean, to consider developing stories for television.
“I literally was like, ‘You are out of your mind. I’m never going back to television. I told you that,’” Biel remembers saying. But Biel eventually changed her tune. She and Purple began developing The Sinner, an anthology named for Petra Hammesfahr’s 1999 novel, which inspired the first season. That initial season series starred Bill Pullman as a detective trying to figure out why a woman (Biel) had stabbed a man to death in broad daylight.
The USA Network show debuted to critical acclaim and strong ratings, and earned Biel nominations at the Golden Globes and Emmys. The network renewed the show for three more seasons, and finally put some momentum behind Biel’s production company. “I was super nervous about it. I was like, I hope this doesn’t end my career,” she says. “How we were experiencing television was so different from what I knew growing up.”
Biel next developed the series Limetown, in which she played a journalist investigating the disappearance of 300 people from a facility in Tennessee. The show, which also starred Stanley Tucci, was gripping and interesting; unfortunately, it was also funded by the short-lived Facebook Originals on Meta’s Watch streaming service. “Literally while we were editing the show, they called us and they were like, ‘Yeah, so, we’re not doing scripted content anymore,’” says Biel. “So it didn’t get any marketing, and just disappeared.”
Her production company found better success with its followups, including Freeform’s Cruel Summer—a mystery series about a girl’s disappearance in the 90s – and Candy—a miniseries in which Biel starred as the infamous Candy Montgomery, who was accused of killing the neighbor who had an affair with Candy’s husband. “I changed as an artist. I just was like, ‘I’m not going to do things that I’m not interested in and I’m going to fight for the things that I really care about,’” she says.
She cares about The Better Sister, especially because she can relate to her character Chloe in an unexpected way. Chloe is a high-profile media figure who’s often covered in the press and stalked by paparazzi. But Biel has been in that spotlight for much longer than Chloe has. “I understand presenting an image. That’s part of my job on some level. At least, it used to be when I was younger. That’s what we were taught to do,” she says. “You have this outward image, and you need to maintain that image. Nobody wants to hear about your personal life, and nobody wants to know all those gross yucky details of how you’re not this thing—so keep your mouth shut.”
Biel says it’s different now than it was in the 90s when she rose to fame. Celebrities can be more open (and seemingly authentic) on social media. Still, she—and her husband, Justin Timberlake—can find the task challenging. “I know how to present in a certain way, and then be able to be a very different person home alone by myself,” she says.
As the mother of two boys, Biel also easily related to Chloe’s desire to protect her son. “Being a mom, [I already had] that protective feeling that you would literally almost do anything that you had to do to assure that your kids are going to be safe,” she says. “So that was easy. That was already there for me.” She bonded quickly with Maxwell Acee Donovan, who plays Chloe’s teenage son Ethan on the show, particularly since they’re both originally from Boulder, Colorado. “He’s just got this openness about him. He’s a really raw talent, I think,” she says.
The Better Sister will keep audiences on the edge of their seats as they try to understand Chloe’s choices—both in her past and her present. But Biel was able to find empathy for her character. “That’s really where it starts. I get why she’s making these really bad decisions. I get it. I don’t necessarily like it, but I have compassion for her. And once you get to that place, then the door’s wide open.”
It’s also wide open for Biel. She’s found a niche starring and producing these twisty mystery thrillers: “I just needed to get a little wiser and not care so much about what everyone else thought—what my industry thought about me—and just be like, ‘Whatever. I’m going to do my own thing,” she says. Still, it may be time to turn the page and see what other sandboxes she can play in. “I just love psychological drama thriller. It’s just so fun as an artist to mess around,” she says. “I feel like I’m maybe creatively inspired to try something else. But I think I’ll always just love this space.”
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