Before she was Jessica Jones in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Krysten Ritter was in the TV series Breaking Bad. Her time on the show as Jane Margolis wasn’t particularly joyful, due to her harrowing end, and making it is something that’s stayed with the actor.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, she recalls that it all felt “extremely heavy” to put together. “It’s an on-set experience that I still have a very visceral response to and can see pretty clearly,” Ritter says. “I can see Bryan [Cranston] going across that line and taking a minute and sitting in the corner. And I also struggled because I was in this chest cast, so I couldn’t get a full breath of air. And Aaron Paul was pounding on my chest for the next one. So it was just such an intense day. It was definitely one for the books.”
Without getting too into spoilers – Breaking Bad is very good and if you haven’t you should give it a try – Ritter’s last scene has her fall prey to Cranston’s Walter White. It’s a moment that cements Walter as a thorough antagonist, and makes us feel all the more sympathetic for Aaron Paul’s Jesse.
In the same interview, Ritter talks about returning to the role for an appearance in El Camino, the drama movie sequel following Jesse immediately post-Breaking Bad. “It’s one of the best television shows in the history of television, and being a part of this legacy is so cool,” she says. “So revisiting it just felt like a piece of candy. It was like, ‘I’m doing a victory lap and I’m reliving the glory days.’ It was awesome.”
You can find aslo Ritter in Nightbooks, a fantasy movie on Netflix directed by David Yarovsky. The official synopsis reads: “When Alex (Winslow Fegley), a boy obsessed with scary stories, is trapped by an evil witch (Ritter) in her magical apartment, and must tell a scary story every night to stay alive, he teams up with another prisoner, Yasmin (Lidya Jewett), to find a way to escape.”