USA TODAY International Edition
Ritter spills just a tiny bit on ‘Jessica Jones’
Even if you have your own Marvel series, you can still get in trouble with the top brass. Krysten Ritter, who plays Jessica Jones, may have accidentally revealed too much about the second season of the Netflix superhero series (now streaming).
“I don’t know if it was because I said too much, maybe someone was listening on the phone, maybe somebody read something. But I did get an email (reprimand),” the actress, 36, said in a phone interview.
After that, Ritter was cautious in discussing the show, especially the return of the villainous Kilgrave (David Tennant), whom Jessica killed last season, though he somehow returns.
“I can confirm that he’s back but I can’t talk about the context,” she said.
More on what she could say, as well as how the series, which tackles sexual assault issues head-on, resonates in the Me Too era:
Question: The new season finds Jessica investigating her own origins, and is structured differently. Do you think fans will be surprised?
Ritter: What I think we’re doing this season is peeling back even more layers into Jessica to figure out why and when she became so dark in her life. So we’re going backwards in order to move forward . ... We’re not doing a procedural, where there’s a new case every week. Jessica’s the case. And I think that is a difficult thing to pull off in the writing, and I was really pleased and blown away that they were able to keep the DNA and the integrity of that style of storytelling intact.
Q: Season 1 dealt with Jessica physically battling her sexual assaulter, and now we are in a watershed moment with how we talk about sexual harassment and assault. Do you think the first season would have been received differently if it came out now?
Ritter: I think that a lot of conversations were happening around the show (in 2016). It’s impossible for me to say if the perception would be different, I’m not sure. (But) it’s exciting that all of this is being brought to the forefront.
Q: The new season includes a scene in which a former actress confronts a director who manipulated her into having sex with him when she was 15. When did you guys shoot that? What was it like?
Ritter: When the Me Too movement started, I think that was in October, we had just finished the show and we were all texting each other, “Whoa, this is so crazy that we just did this in our show.” (Creator Melissa Rosenberg) has said that these are not new issues. This is not something that just started happening, this is something that’s been happening for a very long time, and far too long.
Q: Offscreen, have you been involved with Time’s Up or any other advocacy efforts?
Ritter: I haven’t been. I support what everyone’s doing and I’m really excited about it . ... There’s just a palpable infectious energy happening (and) we’re all just feeling like the sky’s the limit and that there’s nowhere to go but up.