Jessica Biel has more in common with the murderer she plays in the miniseries The Sinner than you’d think. No, she hasn’t stabbed someone to death for unexplained reasons. And she doesn’t have memories of creepy ski masks and psychosexual horror.
The connections are more universal, ones that let the actress finally — finally! — explore the inky depths of emotion and trauma onscreen for the first time.
Her character, Cora Tannetti, grew up under the thumb of a religious zealot of a mother. Something long-buried in her past caused her to kill, and over eight episodes the tale unravels. The series airs Mondays on Showcase, and back episodes are available On Demand.
“Growing up, my family was not like that at all but I can understand that feeling (of not being able to escape a situation). I’ve had that feeling at work, in my professional life before. I’ve had that feeling in relationships before,” Biel says.
“And I think Cora and I both have a people-pleasing quality. She lets herself be taken advantage of to make someone else feel comfortable, and I have a similar tendency. It’s embarrassing to say, but I do. That’s something that I have been struggling with and will struggle with all my life, probably.”
Jessica Biel in The Sinner [Peter Kramer/USA Network]
Plus, celebrity buzz tends to fixate on the fact she’s married to singer Justin Timberlake, with whom she has a child. Thus The Sinner, based on the like-named book by Petra Hammesfahr, offered her a chance to reinvent herself. And she went all-in — Biel is also an executive producer.
“This is the kind of thing that I’ve been wanting to do for years, and for whatever reason someone else gets the part, or I don’t have the international appeal, or whatever the reason is. I just feel that I’ve been very unlucky with the things I wanted to do professionally in some cases.
“I’ve had a great career and worked with amazing people, and I’m not ashamed of my career or anything that I’ve done. I’ve just always had this interest, so it’s funny that just now, so many years into my career, that I’m doing something like this.”
So far on The Sinner, Det. Ambrose (Bill Pullman) has become obsessed with uncovering Cora’s buried motive for murder — borderline uncomfortably so. Flashbacks layered inside flashbacks have revealed memories of a country club where not-so-good things went down. In Monday’s episode a new character, Det. Farmer (Joanna Adler), arrives to shake things up after a chilling discovery in the woods.
Jessica Biel in The Sinner [Peter Kramer/USA Network]
In later episodes, the plot delves into even darker crevices and one particularly raunchy, drug-fuelled scene made headlines when it aired this week on American broadcaster USA Network. It’s a long way from Biel’s first — and last — starring TV role, playing eldest daughter Mary Camden on the feel-good series 7th Heaven from 1996 to 2007.
“7th Heaven is where I learned so much as an actor. I learned how to interact with the camera and crew, the director of photography, lighting, other actors. I look back at it with intense fondness and a wistful grin.
“I mean, I was terrible. If you go back and watch those episodes, I’m bad. I’m not good … It was the first thing that I’ve ever done, so I don’t know who I am … I just look back at it with an open heart and want to hug it and squeeze it, remember how much fun it was, and how lovely everybody was,” she says.
“(Now I’m) playing such a psychologically complicated woman who is unreliable, even to herself. What an opportunity to get behind something like this and be able to get the pieces together as an executive-producer – to get the right writer, the right director of photography, the right actors, be part of all of those elements. That was a real score for me.”
The Sinner airs Mondays on Showcase
