It seems impossible now, but once upon a time, Hollywood didn’t quite know what to do with Jessica Biel. After finding fame in the mid-’90s as the eldest daughter of a Protestant minister on the WB-CW family drama “7th Heaven,” Biel carved out a presence on the big screen, starring in movies including “The Illusionist,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and (perhaps most regrettably) “I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry.”
Though she worked regularly, Biel got the sense that the industry saw her as just another pretty face, stranded on Jessica Island (population: Biel, Chastain, Alba). She was decades into her career when she began a recurring guest role as a heightened, animated version of herself on Netflix’s “BoJack Horseman” in 2016, gamely poking fun at herself and the less-than-memorable roles she had portrayed on-screen.
“I’m Jessica Biel,” she tells a barista who fails to recognize her. “From ‘Stealth,’ ‘Summer Catch,’ ‘Rules of Attraction.’” When none of those titles jog the barista’s memory, Biel’s Hollywood alter ego sighs and references the scantily clad photo shoot she did while on the wholesome series that launched her career: “The girl from ‘7th Heaven’ who took all her clothes off for that magazine.”
“Oooh, yeah,” the barista replies in belated recognition. The running joke picks back up later in the episode when Biel, desperate for service in the same busy coffee shop, yells: “I’m famous actress Jessica Biel! I’m one of the Jessicas!”
Biel had long known she was capable of being more than just “one of the Jessicas,” and she said as much in interviews throughout the early days of her post-breakout career. “I crave something dark, deep and complicated when it comes to acting,” she told ContactMusic.com in 2012.
Biel eventually found the project she had been looking for in “The Sinner,” a 2017 psychological thriller that launched with a mystery surrounding a woman who commits a brutal, seemingly unprovoked murder while spending the day with her family on a crowded beach. The USA series was the first TV show helmed by Biel’s production company, Iron Ocean Films, which she launched with her producing partner Michelle Purple.
The role, opposite Bill Pullman, landed Biel her first major award nominations — including an Emmy nod for best lead actress in a limited series or movie.
Biel and Purple met, somewhat ironically, on the set of the 2005 action flick “Stealth,” where Purple was a producer. Though far from a career-defining credit for either of them, “Stealth” would prove pivotal to both Biel and Purple, because it’s where they realized they had similar frustrations — and ambitions — when it came to the entertainment industry.
“I wasn’t feeling terribly fulfilled creatively in my career at that time and wanted to take some ownership,” Biel recalled over Zoom recently, with Purple at her side.
Nearly 20 years after they bonded over John Hughes movies and their desire to tell interesting stories about women, Biel and Purple easily finish each other’s sentences. In addition to “The Sinner,” which grew into an anthology that aired for four seasons on USA, the two have produced acclaimed series such as Hulu’s true-crime miniseries “Candy” (based on the story of Candy Montgomery, a Texas housewife who was put on trial for murdering her neighbor Betty Gore) and Freeform’s “Cruel Summer,” which drew record ratings for the YA-centric network in its first season and recently returned for a second installment.
“One of our big mandates when sitting down and starting the company together was creating roles for other women,” Purple said. By all accounts, they’ve been successful — and not just in terms of roles for Biel, who led Season 1 of “The Sinner” and played the title role (opposite Melanie Lynskey as Gore) in “Candy.” Subsequent seasons of “The Sinner” featured Carrie Coon, Hannah Gross and Alice Kremelberg, while “Cruel Summer” is generating buzz for its young leads. Biel and Purple’s production efforts have put them in the company of Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Eva Longoria and other actresses who have taken it upon themselves to create more opportunities for women in Hollywood.
The first few years were rough. “It was a nightmare. Let’s just tell it like it was,” Biel said. “It was horrible.”
At the time, there was only one woman-run production company that Biel and Purple knew of: Flower Films, founded by Drew Barrymore and Nancy Juvonen. “We’re friends with them. We love what they do,” Purple said. “But everybody wanted us to do what they were doing.”
“Which was, like, really hardcore romantic comedies,” Biel said. “They did that, though. We were not trying to just grab on to their coattails and ride off into the sunset.”
“We didn’t make anything for years,” Biel added. “It was really hard, and it was really disheartening.”
A turning point arrived when Purple’s husband, Bill Purple, directed Biel in the 2008 short film “Hole in the Paper Sky.” Purple encouraged Biel to get experience outside acting. “I did a lot of things behind the camera,” Biel said. “I pushed a dolly. I did craft service.” Iron Ocean later produced a couple of indie films, including “The Book of Love” (2016), starring Biel, Jason Sudeikis and Maisie Williams, and the scripted podcast turned Facebook Watch series “Limetown” (2019).
The first season of “The Sinner” was based on German author Petra Hammesfahr’s novel of the same name, and Biel and Purple remember feeling as if they had a potential hit on their hands — so much so that they guarded the material closely. “This is ours. Nobody is going to take it from us,” Purple recalls thinking.
“But you still don’t know,” she added. “You don’t know if it’s going to work. You don’t know if it’s going to resonate with people.”
“We put our heart and souls into these projects, and then we send [them] off to college and we cross our fingers that people see in [them] what we do,” Purple added. “‘The Sinner’ was the game-changing moment for us in the sense of people looked at us different. The industry took us a little bit more seriously.”
Biel said they didn’t anticipate the show’s success, in part because neither she nor Purple had produced a television series. Putting together a team of writers, directors and showrunners was completely new to them, and it felt as if they were editing episodes as they delivered them. “It was chaos, so there wasn’t a lot of time to dream about the future and think about accolades,” Biel said. “We just couldn’t believe we actually did the damn thing.”
“The Sinner” aired its fourth and final season in 2021, just months after “Cruel Summer” premiered. Biel and Purple appeared to have found a niche in smart, twisty thrillers. “The psychological thriller is just my favorite. I love the weird human brain,” Biel said. “I like being on the edge of my seat as a viewer, and as an actor I enjoy stepping into those type of roles.”
Despite loving the genre, Biel and Purple have been intentional about not being confined to a particular type of series. “The Sinner” is gritty and brooding, while “Candy” has a darkly comedic tone. (Biel’s husband, Justin Timberlake, makes a tongue-in-cheek cameo in the latter.)
“Cruel Summer” introduced a mystery that unfolds across multiple ’90s-era timelines and shifts between the perspectives of its dueling protagonists (played by Olivia Holt and Chiara Aurelia), beckoning viewers to decide who the true villain might be. In the wake of “Pretty Little Liars” and other teen thrillers gone rogue, “Cruel Summer” felt fresh in its depiction of young adults navigating difficult choices — and the consequences that come along with them.
“We were just really interested in looking at a world where we let young men and women really exist in that space, because it happens,” Biel said. “Young men and women are put into high-risk situations all the time.”
Season 2, set in a fictional town in Washington state, introduces a similarly byzantine whodunit that takes place in the years before and after Y2K.
“‘Cruel Summer’ really checked a box for us,” Purple said, “because when we first came across it, we were like, ‘Wow!’ I had to tell Jessica she was too old to play [either of the main characters], because you had roles where these young girls got to play not one character but three versions of that character.” (“It was a blow for me,” Biel jokingly interjects.)
“I spent a lot of my younger years just playing somebody’s girlfriend, playing somebody’s date at the party — it was like Girl No. 3, Girl No. 4 — and these young women are getting to do the roles of a lifetime at like 19,” Biel said. “I was so happy for them and so excited to be a part of the creative team behind the scenes, because I want something better for them, … better than the way I had it, for sure.”
Biel is herself reaping the benefits of an evolving (however slowly) and more inclusive industry. “It’s changed so much in terms of a camaraderie. It felt like when I was younger that all of us female actresses were really pitted against each other,” Biel said. “‘Don’t talk about this,’ ‘don’t see each other,’ ‘don’t be in the waiting rooms at the same time’ — all of this hullabaloo around trying to keep us separate — and that’s very different now.”
Biel and Purple have projects in development with Emily Mortimer and Renée Zellweger. Biel also recently connected with Elizabeth Olsen, who took on the role of Candy Montgomery in the recent HBO series “Love & Death.” They’re also returning to their film roots, building a slate of feature projects to come.
“We’re all just working hard to make great films and TV and tell great stories,” Biel said. “And I don’t feel anymore that I can’t pick up the phone and call Reese [Witherspoon] and just say: ‘Hey, I have this idea. Will you listen to this pitch?’ I mean, maybe she’s busy, but I feel like she’ll take my call.”
