Biel plays ‘The Sinner,’ but tries to be a model mom
Actress caught red-handed in murder thriller
Jessica Biel is taking a stab at her most dramatic role yet. After 11 seasons on The WB’s
7th Heaven and several films, the actress is returning to TV as executive producer and star of USA’s new thriller The Sinner (Wednesday, 10 ET/PT), an eight-episode adaptation of Petra Hammesfahr’s bestseller.
The mystery centers on troubled young mother Cora Tannetti (Biel), who violently kills a man, seemingly at random, while at the beach with her family one afternoon. Detective Harry Ambrose (Bill Pullman) attempts to unravel her murderous motivations, only to discover unsettling details about her past that raise more questions than answers.
Biel, 35, caught up with USA TODAY about The Sinner and son Silas, 2, with husband Justin Timberlake.
Q In what ways could you relate to Cora or sympathize with her?
A The thing about Cora that I hope a lot of people relate to is that everybody struggles with things in their past or things about them that they’d like to change.
Q For most of the show, Cora wears a prison jumpsuit, with messy hair and no makeup. Was that a refreshing change?
A It’s very freeing, because you don’t have to spend a long time in the morning focusing on (your appearance). It’s very much a part of the experience she’s having and who she is as a character to not rely on those tools. ... I’m loving it.
Q You’ve produced films such as The Tall Man and The Book of Love. How does your experience working behind the scenes on The Sinner compare?
A One of my favorite things to do is work with writers on character and dialogue. It’s been really challenging because there’s a much different delivery schedule for television, and we have a lot of dates that we have to hit, and we are kind of driving the train down the track on the fastest gear possible, which is very intense.
Q How has becoming a parent influenced the projects you take on?
A I definitely find that I’m way more picky, simply because of the time commitment. More than anything, you want to spend time with your family, and it’s such a full body-and-soul experience being an actor that you have to pick wisely. Q How do you and Justin juggle family with your respective careers?
A That is an ongoing balancing act that maybe you never 100% master. We’re always working, day in and day out, to find that good balance. And Justin, I love the way he always puts it. He’s like, “Yeah, you get married, but you still have to date each other. That’s really important.”
I think we do a really good job of, even though we’re really busy, taking one day a week and having a date night or taking a vacation just the two of us, and then making sure we have a family thing set up.
The Sinner really wants to make you curious.
USA’s new Jessica Biel vehicle (Wednesday, 10 ET/PT, out of four) unspools a murder mystery in which everyone knows who did it. Biel plays Cora Tannetti, a seemingly average suburban woman with a boring husband (Christopher Abbott) and a young son. One day, on the beach of a nearby lake, she stabs a man to death, in broad daylight, in front of her family and friends.
The series, based on the novel by Petra Hammesfahr and created by Derek Simonds, isn’t a whodunit but a why-she-did-it, as investigated by Harry Ambrose (Bill Pullman), a wizened but troubled detective who develops an obsession with Cora’s case.
If nothing else, The Sinner achieves its goal of piquing your curiosity. As each new piece of information about Cora and her victim is revealed, the mystery deepens. But it’s impossible to trust the narrative, as explanations for Cora’s violence and epi- sodes from her past turn out to be lies or misdirections. Flashbacks reveal Cora had an abusive childhood, and the image of wallpaper and a woman beckoning her have an uncertain significance.
It’s all enough to keep viewers guessing over eight episodes. Yet there’s an exploitative quality to the series that’s hard to shake.
Every crime drama uses violence as entertainment, from the routine sexual assaults on Law
and Order: SVU to the weird villain on True Detective, but there’s something about the way the mystery unfolds on Sinner that feels particularly seedy. Instead of trying to unmask the culprit, it slowly peels back the layers to reveal just how deeply Cora has been hurt.
It’s a troubling way to build a successful series, and, at least in the first three episodes made available for review, it’s discomfiting.
Cora’s attack, early in the pilot, is portrayed with graphic violence, while the frequent flashbacks to her abusive upbringing is unsettling. Early on, the depiction of its themes of repressed female sexuality and violence feels lazy.
Biel, who returns to TV more than 10 years after her starmaking turn on 7th Heaven, makes Cora puzzling enough to remain a mystery but not so unreadable that she’s boring.
Pullman’s talents, however, are wasted. The detective whose demons echo those of the people he investigates is a tired trope. A subplot about his troubled marriage and affair with a dominatrix adds little to the series.
As The Sinner demonstrates, a random, law-abiding woman who kills a stranger in front of dozens of witnesses makes no sense, and it’s impossible not to wonder why, the way the characters around Cora do.
But a serviceable mystery isn’t quite enough to sustain a series.
The Sinner has the opportunity, in its remaining episodes, to show more than violence breeding violence.
Otherwise, we might be able to live without knowing the answers.