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WORK TITLE: Bonfire
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 12/16/1981
WEBSITE:
CITY: Los Angeles
STATE: CA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
partner is musician Adam Granduciel
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born December 16, 1981, in Bloomsburg, PA; daughter of Garry Ritter and Kathi Taylor; partner of Adam Granduciel.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, actor, musician, producer, and model. Actor in films, including Mona Lisa Smile, 2003; What Happens in Vegas, 2008; Confessions of a Shopaholic, 2009; She’s Out of My League, 2010; Veronica Mars, 2014; Big Eyes, 2014; and Vamps. Life Happens (an independent comedy film), cowriter and star. Actor in television and online programs, including Jessica Jones (played main character), Netflix; Defenders (playing Jessica Jones), Netflix; Breaking Bad (playing Jane Margolis), AMC; and Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 (playing Chloe), ABC; also appeared in television programs such as Gravity, Gossip Girl, Veronica Mars, Gilmore Girls, Blacklist, and ‘Til Death.
Actor in commercials. Worked as a model in New York and Philadelphia, in print advertising, in runway shows, and on television. Ex Vivian (an indie rock group), singer and guitarist. Silent Machine (a production company), founder.
AVOCATIONS:Knitting.
AWARDS:Webby Award, Special Achievement: Best Actress, 2016; Nominated for a Critics’ Choice Television Award for her role in Jessica Jones.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Krysten Ritter is an actor, writer, musician, producer, and model. She is probably best known for her portrayal of the Marvel superhero Jessica Jones in the Netflix original series of the same name. Ritter reprised that role in The Defenders, which featured her character Jones as part of a team of superheroes working to save New York. “Jessica Jones is such a great part, and I do serious work on it. I feel really creatively fulfilled. I get to do stunts and great drama and work with great scene partners and also be funny. That’s a high bar,” Ritter told Estelle Tang in an interview in Elle.
Ritter has also had prominent roles in television series such as Breaking Bad, Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, Gilmore Girls, and Veronica Mars. She has also appeared in films such as Mona Lisa Smile, What Happens in Vegas, Confessions of a Shopaholic, and She’s Out of My League. She cowrote and starred in the independent comedy film Life Happens.
Early in her career, Ritter was a model working in runway shows, in advertising, and on television. Ritter’s other creative work includes serving as the guitarist and singer of the two-person musical group Ex Vivian and as a stage actor in plays such as All This Intimacy, an off-Broadway play by Rajiv Joseph, and All New People, written by actor Zach Braff. She is the founder of the production company Silent Machine.
Ritter’s debut novel, Bonfire, is her “fictionalized dive into her own rural upbringing and a thriller in the style of her favorite genre novels,” commented Dave Itzkoff, writing in the New York Times. She wrote the book in the lull between the first Jessica Jones show and The Defenders, Itzkoff noted. Though her stint as Jones had raised her profile as an actor, Ritter said she was dissatisfied with the types of roles she was being offered: “sundry strippers and wives of husbands who were ‘like my dad’s age,’” she told Itzkoff. “’ “No, I don’t want to do that,; she said. ‘That’s not what I want to put into the world.’ Instead, Ms. Ritter spent several months writing Bonfire at her home in Los Angeles, putting meat on the bones of an idea she originally had for a possible TV series,” Itzkoff wrote.
With Bonfire, Ritter “makes a triumphant fiction debut with this pulse-pounding thriller featuring a sympathetic, broken lead character,” observed a Publishers Weekly contributor. Protagonist Abby Williams is a successful environmental lawyer working in Chicago. A former Hoosier, she left her hometown of Barrens, Indiana as soon as she could, with no regrets and no intentions of ever returning. However, her role with the Center for Environmental Advocacy Work has brought her back to Indiana to take on Optimal Plastics, a corporation that is being investigated for polluting the area around Barrens with harmful chemicals.
Abby discovers that the grip Optimal Plastics has on Barrens is almost unshakeable, with the town and the company inextricably linked economically and politically. Corruption, bribery, and political pressure appears to have successfully given the company the leeway to do what it wants. Abby’s return to Indiana also brings back many unpleasant personal memories, such as her younger days as victim of a group of girls who were merciless bullies to her and the unexplained disappearance of one of the worst tormentors. She also recalls her own childhood as the daughter of an abusive father who is now in his declining years. Struggling against her personal feelings and professional obligations, Abby fights for justice while haunted by the past and impeded by the present.
In an interview with Eliza Thompson in Cosmopolitan, Ritter described her motivation for writing a novel. “It was an awesome way for me to have creative control and tell a story that I wanted to tell, and create a character and in my own way play a role that I really wanted to play—and do it on my own time, from my house, in no makeup, and not having to be on or looked at,” Ritter told Thompson.
Ritter also told Thompson about how she uses herself and her own background as an entry point for her fiction. “I always use myself as a way in and then from there embellish and create and imagine and it becomes fiction of course. I wanted to explore themes of having something buried in your past that you’re running from or that you think you’ve left behind, and then when you become an adult, those survival mechanisms that have helped you survive for this long don’t work anymore,” Ritter stated.
A Kirkus Reviews writer called Bonfire a “fast-paced thriller that doesn’t reinvent the wheel but introduces a tough female lead who’s easy to root for.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Cosmopolitan, November 8, 2017, Eliza Thompson, “Krysten Ritter on Her New Novel and Why Women Like ‘Messy’ Characters,” interview with Krysten Ritter.
Elle, November 18, 2017, Estelle Tang, “Krysten Ritter Wants More Complicated, Imperfect, Not-Always-Pretty Characters,” profile of Krysten Ritter.
Hollywood Reporter, November 18, 2017, Michael O’Connell, “A Novel Idea: Krysten Ritter Looks to Adapt Breakout Bonfire.“
Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2017, review of Bonfire.
Library Journal, June 15, 2017, review of Bonfire, p. 3a.
New York Times, November 12, 2017, Dave Itzkoff, “Krysten Ritter Spins Her Own Mystery in Her Debut Novel Bonfire,” profile of Krysten Ritter.
Publishers Weekly, September 4, 2017, review of Bonfire, p. 64.
USA Today, November 8, 2017, James Endrst, “Ritter’s Bonfire: Lots of Smoke, Little Flame,” review of Bonfire, p. 04D.
ONLINE
National Public Radio Website, http://www.npr.org/ (November 3, 2017), Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Weekend Sunday Edition, “In Bonfire, Krysten Ritter Digs up Dirt Both Envrionmental and Emotional,” transcript of radio interview with Krysten Ritter.
Paste, http://www.pastemagazine.com/ (November 7, 2011), Frannie Jackson, “Krysten Ritter Talks Bonfire, Her Debut Novel Starring a Protagonist to Rival Jessica Jones,” profile of Krysten Ritter.
Krysten Ritter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Krysten Ritter
Peabody's 'Marvel's Jessica Jones' Night (27139382503) (edited).jpg
Ritter at Peabody Awards, May 2016
Born Krysten Alyce Ritter
December 16, 1981 (age 36)
Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, US
Residence Los Angeles, California, US
Occupation
Actress musician model
Years active 2001–present
Krysten Alyce Ritter (born December 16, 1981)[1] is an American actress. Ritter is known for her roles as lead superheroine Jessica Jones on the Marvel Cinematic Universe series Jessica Jones and the crossover miniseries The Defenders, Jane Margolis on the AMC drama series Breaking Bad, and Chloe on the ABC comedy series Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23. She has also had roles in the television series Gravity, 'Til Death, Veronica Mars, Gossip Girl, and The Blacklist, and has appeared in films such as What Happens in Vegas (2008), 27 Dresses (2008), Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009), She's Out of My League (2010), Veronica Mars (2014), and Big Eyes (2014).
Contents
1 Early life
2 Career
2.1 Modeling
2.2 Acting
2.3 Other ventures
3 Personal life
4 Filmography
4.1 Film
4.2 Television
4.3 Web
4.4 Music videos
5 Discography
6 Bibliography
7 Accolades
8 References
9 External links
Early life
Ritter was born in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania,[2] the daughter of Garry Ritter and Kathi Taylor.[3] She was raised on a farm outside Shickshinny, Pennsylvania, where her mother, stepfather and sister live; her father lives in nearby Benton.[4] Ritter graduated in 2000 from Northwest Area High School. Ritter is of German, Scottish, and English descent.[5]
Career
Modeling
Ritter was scouted by a modeling agent at her local shopping mall, the Wyoming Valley Mall, at the age of 15, at a modeling event. Ritter described herself at the time as "tall, gawky, awkward, and really, really skinny" to Philadelphia Style magazine. While in high school, she traveled to New York City on her days off and began modeling there and in Philadelphia. She signed with the Elite Model Management agency and then with Wilhelmina Models.[4] Ritter moved to New York City at the age of 18 and established an international-modeling career in print ads and on television. She did magazine, catalog, and runway work in Milan, New York, Paris, and Tokyo.[6]
Acting
Ritter's acting career began when Wilhelmina placed her for an audition for a Dr Pepper television commercial. Ritter told Philadelphia Style that she felt her "outgoing and bubbly and funny" personality as a performer helped her transition into acting naturally by letting her entertain the casting people.[4] She won several bit film roles starting in 2001, and then played a 1950s art history student in Julia Roberts' Mona Lisa Smile (2003). In 2006, she appeared in All This Intimacy, a two-act, Off-Broadway play by Rajiv Joseph, at the Second Stage Theatre.[7] Ritter signed on to star in the premiere of Zach Braff's play, All New People, at Second Stage Theatre. Anna Camp, David Wilson Barnes and Justin Bartha co-starred in the production under the direction of Peter DuBois.[8]
Ritter had a number of guest starring roles on television, and appeared on the second season of Veronica Mars, playing Gia Goodman, the daughter of mayor Woody Goodman (Steve Guttenberg). Ritter guest-starred on Gilmore Girls for eight episodes from 2006 to 2007 as Rory Gilmore's friend, Lucy. She also played the first iteration of Allison Stark on the Fox sitcom 'Til Death (which eventually had four actresses play that role through its run).
Ritter at the premiere of 27 Dresses in January 2008
Ritter continued working in film, often cast as the best friend of the lead character. In 2008, she had supporting roles in the romantic comedies What Happens in Vegas and 27 Dresses. She co-starred in the 2009 film Confessions of a Shopaholic as Suze, the best friend of Isla Fisher's character. Ritter spent three months shooting She's Out of My League in Pittsburgh in 2008. She played Patty, the cynical best friend of Alice Eve's character Molly.[6]
Ritter was cast as a young Carol Rhodes in an episode of The CW's teen drama series Gossip Girl titled "Valley Girls", which aired May 11, 2009.[9] The episode was a backdoor pilot for a proposed spin-off series of the same title, set in 1980s Los Angeles, that would chronicle the teenage years of the character Lily van der Woodsen.[10] Ritter described her character Carol, Lily's sister, as "the outcast", and "an '80s Sunset Strip rocker" to Access Hollywood.[11] The series was not picked up by the network for the 2009–10 season.[12]
Ritter co-starred as Jane Margolis on the second season of AMC's drama series Breaking Bad,[10] and starred in the film How to Make Love to a Woman (2009), based on a best-selling book by adult film star Jenna Jameson. She also co-starred with Jason Behr in the independent film The Last International Playboy (2009), as Ozzy, a drug addict.[13] Ritter sold a television pilot that she wrote based on her experiences as a model, named Model Camp.[14] She appeared in the comedy web series Woke Up Dead in 2009, playing Cassie alongside Jon Heder as Drex.[15]
In 2010, Ritter starred in the television series Gravity alongside Ivan Sergei, Ving Rhames, and Rachel Hunter, playing the sharp and quirky Lily.[16] The Starz comedy-drama centers on a group of out-patient suicide survivors.[17] She starred opposite Ben Barnes in the 2011 comedy film Killing Bono as the manager of an Irish band.[16] Directed by Nick Hamm, the film is based on Killing Bono: I Was Bono's Doppleganger, a book about the early days of the Irish rock band U2.[18] Beginning in January 2010, the film's shoot lasted for six weeks and moved from Belfast to London before returning to Belfast.[19]
Ritter starred alongside Alicia Silverstone in the comedy horror film Vamps, written and directed by Amy Heckerling. She plays a New York City socialite turned into a vampire by a vampire queen (Sigourney Weaver). She also stars in the 2011 independent comedy film Life Happens, with Kate Bosworth and Rachel Bilson. Co-written by Ritter with director Kat Coiro, the film is about two best friends dealing with the pregnancy and subsequent motherhood of Ritter's character.
Ritter at the 2017 San Diego Comic-Con
In early February 2011, Ritter joined the cast of the ABC sitcom Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23, playing the title role of Chloe, a New York City party girl and con artist who tries to rip off her new roommates after they move in, but who ends up befriending and "mentoring" one of the applicants.[20][21] The series was canceled on January 22, 2013 after two seasons.[22] On February 15, 2013, it was reported that Ritter would star as Nora in the NBC comedy pilot Assistance, based on Leslye Headland's play of the same name.[23] However, it was confirmed in January 2014 that the pilot would not be picked up to series.[24] On July 9, 2013, it was announced that Ritter would star in Jake Hoffman's directorial debut, Asthma, which centers on the indie rock scene in New York City.[25] It was announced on February 20, 2014 that Ritter would star on NBC's astronaut-themed comedy pilot Mission Control as aerospace engineer Dr. Mary Kendricks.[26][27] On October 15, 2014, NBC announced that it was no longer moving forward with the show.[28]
On December 5, 2014, Ritter was cast to star in the Marvel Television series Jessica Jones, playing the title role, a former superhero turned private investigator in New York City. On her casting, executive producer and showrunner Melissa Rosenberg stated that Ritter "brings both the hard edge and the vulnerability the role demands".[29] Ritter revealed that she had been reading through the comic book in preparation for the role while also expressing her delight on working with Rosenberg and women in general.[30] All 13 episodes of the first season premiered on Netflix on November 20, 2015.[31] Ritter reprised the role on The Defenders alongside Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock / Daredevil, Mike Colter as Luke Cage and Finn Jones as Danny Rand / Iron Fist, and reprised her role again in a second season of Jessica Jones in 2018.[32]
Other ventures
Ritter is one half of indie rock duo Ex Vivian, with her childhood friend William Thomas Burnett. Their self-titled debut album was released in 2012 on Burnett's WT Records.[33] Ritter's debut novel, a psychological thriller titled Bonfire, was released on November 7, 2017, by Crown Archetype.[34]
Personal life
Ritter moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 2007.[35] She sings and plays guitar in a band called Ex Vivian.[36] She also promotes animal rights and has posed for PETA ad campaigns, including one warning pet owners of the dangers of leaving dogs in cars during the summer, and another against SeaWorld keeping orcas in captivity.[37][38][39] She has been in a relationship with musician Adam Granduciel since August 2014.[40] She is an avid knitter,[41] and has appeared on the cover of Vogue Knitting.[42]
Filmography
Film
Year Title Role Notes
2001 Someone Like You Model Uncredited
2002 Freshening Up Girl on couch Short film
2002 Garmento Poncho model
2003 The Look Mara
2003 Mona Lisa Smile Art History student
2005 Slingshot Beth
2007 Heavy Petting Innocent bystander
2008 The Last International Playboy Ozzy
2008 27 Dresses Gina the goth
2008 What Happens in Vegas Kelly
2009 Glock Beretta Short film
2009 Confessions of a Shopaholic Suze Cleath-Stuart
2010 She's Out of My League Patty
2010 How to Make Love to a Woman Lauren
2011 Killing Bono Gloria
2011 Life Happens Kim Also writer and co-producer
2011 Margaret Shopgirl
2012 BuzzKill Nicole
2012 Vamps Stacy Daimen
2012 Refuge Amy
2014 Listen Up Philip Melanie
2014 Veronica Mars Gia Goodman
2014 Asthma Ruby
2014 Search Party Christy
2014 Big Eyes DeAnn
2017 The Hero Lucy
Television
Year Title Role Notes
2004 Whoopi Brynn Episode: "The Squatters"
2004 One Life to Live Kay 4 episodes
2004 Law & Order Tracy Warren Episode: "Everybody Loves Raimondo's"
2004 Tanner on Tanner Saleswoman 2 episodes
2005 Jonny Zero Quinn Episode: "Pilot"
2005–2006 Veronica Mars Gia Goodman Recurring role; 8 episodes
2006 The Bedford Diaries Erin Kavenaugh 2 episodes
2006–2007 Gilmore Girls Lucy Recurring role; 8 episodes
2006–2007 'Til Death Allison Stark 5 episodes
2006 Justice Eva Episode: "Christmas Party"
2007 Big Day Ellen Episode: "The Ceremony"
2009–2010 Breaking Bad Jane Margolis Recurring role; 9 episodes
2009 Gossip Girl Young Carol Rhodes Episode: "Valley Girls"
2010 Gravity Lily Champagne Main role; 10 episodes
2011 Love Bites Cassie Episode: "Firsts"
2012–2013 Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 Chloe Lead role; 26 episodes
2013 Robot Chicken Dana Polk (voice) Episode: "Immortal"
2013 The Cleveland Show Gina (voice) Episode: "California Dreamin' (All the Cleves Are Brown)"
2013 The Eric Andre Show Herself Episode: "Krysten Ritter; Dominic Monaghan"
2014 The Blacklist Rowan/Nora Mills Episode: "Lord Baltimore"
2015–present Jessica Jones Jessica Jones Lead role
2016 Comedy Bang! Bang! Herself Episode: "Krysten Ritter Wears a Turtleneck and Black Boots"
2017 The Defenders Jessica Jones Main role
Web
Year Title Role Notes
2009 Woke Up Dead Cassie Main role; 22 episodes
Music videos
Year Title Artist Role Notes
1999 "Waffle" Sevendust Extra N/A
2000 "Could I Have This Kiss Forever" Whitney Houston Extra N/A
2017 "Holding On" The War on Drugs Concept N/A
Discography
Ex-Vivian (2012)
Bibliography
Ritter, Krysten (2017). Bonfire (Hardcover ed.). Crown Archetype. ISBN 978-1-5247-5984-1.
Accolades
Year Nominated work Award Category Result Ref.
2012 Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 Teen Choice Awards Choice TV: Villain Nominated [43]
2015 Jessica Jones
Episode: "AKA You're a Winner!" TVLine's Performer of the Week Won [44]
2016 Jessica Jones 6th Critics' Choice Television Awards Best Actress in a Drama Series Nominated [45]
Dorian Awards TV Performance of the Year – Actress Nominated [46]
Webby Awards Special Achievement: Best Actress Won [47]
42nd Saturn Awards Best Actress on Television Nominated [48]
2018 Marvel's The Defenders 44th Saturn Awards Best Supporting Actress on Television Pending [49]
Krysten Ritter is well known for her starring roles in the award winning Netflix original series, Marvel's Jessica Jones, and cult favorite, Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23, as well as her pivotal role on AMC’s Breaking Bad. Krysten’s work on film includes Big Eyes, Listen Up Philip, Life Happens, Confessions of a Shopaholic and She’s Out of My League. She is the founder of Silent Machine, a production company which aims to highlight complex female protagonists. Ritter and her dog Mikey split their time between New York and Los Angeles.
Krysten Ritter Spins Her Own Mystery in Her Debut Novel, ‘Bonfire’
By DAVE ITZKOFFNOV. 12, 2017
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“I’m not conventional. I try to be raw and vulnerable and gross,” Krysten Ritter said in discussing her new book. Credit Andrew White for The New York Times
When Krysten Ritter was writing her first novel, “Bonfire,” about a shady cover-up in small-town America, a plastics company with suspicious motives and a decade-old scandal given new relevance, she understood the genre she was working in.
Still, she surprised herself when she finished a first draft of the manuscript and was able to take it all in.
“The book is dark, I am aware,” she said in her natural, deadpan mode. “But I don’t think I was aware how dark until I read the whole thing in one sitting.”
Ms. Ritter has already shown an affinity for shadowy, suspenseful material in her film and TV work, playing enigmatic characters on shows like “Breaking Bad” and “Don’t Trust the B - - - - in Apartment 23.”
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RELATED COVERAGE
BY THE BOOK
Krysten Ritter: By the Book NOV. 9, 2017
Review: Krysten Ritter Is a Gumshoe With Superhero Troubles in ‘Jessica Jones’ NOV. 18, 2015
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And she has embraced the flawed but powerful title character she currently plays on the Netflix superhero drama “Jessica Jones,” a detective fighting to take charge of her life while she tends to some deep psychic wounds.
“Bonfire,” which was published by Crown Archetype earlier this month, is Ms. Ritter’s fictionalized dive into her own rural upbringing and a thriller in the style of her favorite genre novels. In a review, Publishers Weekly called it “a triumphant fiction debut” and a “pulse-pounding thriller featuring a sympathetic, broken lead character.”
But Ms. Ritter said she also considered the novel “an act of pure defiance”: a narrative she wants to see more of, featuring a female protagonist she relates to, made at a time when she was disappointed with other acting opportunities that were offered to her.
Photo
Credit Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times
“I’m not conventional,” Ms. Ritter said over a recent lunch in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “I try to be raw and vulnerable and gross.” The novel, she said, “was a way for me to create something for myself — to take the story back and do what I want to do.”
The protagonist of “Bonfire” is Abby Williams, an environmental lawyer in Chicago who returns to her modest hometown of fictional Barrens, Ind., to investigate a case against Optimal Plastics, a conglomerate intertwined in seemingly every aspect of the community.
There, while Abby is reacquainted with all that she loved and (mostly) hated about living there, she is drawn back into an unsolved mystery from her high-school days, 10 years earlier, when a group of her teenage tormentors were beset by an unexplained sickness and one of her mean-girl rivals went missing.
Ms. Ritter, 35, who came of age in the small borough of Shickshinny, Pa., said her ambition was to bring to life a “twisted backwoods” setting where “the party that you go to on Friday night is a bonfire,” and “the district magistrate is putting people in juvie when he’s out smoking weed with kids on the weekends.”
Some of the most evocative passages in “Bonfire” are about Abby’s awkward return to Barrens, a town she thought she outran. There, Ms. Ritter writes, beauty works “by sidling up to you when you least expect it” and an unappealing childhood home “seems to rush toward me and not the other way around. Like it’s eager to get me inside. Like it’s been waiting.”
Ms. Ritter did not have a high-school experience as brutal as Abby’s but, she said, “I understand the feelings of being the outcast and the loner.”
In her early teens, she came to Shickshinny as an only child raised by a divorced mother, traits that she said made her a prominent target for whispers and rumors. “At that time, where I’m from, nobody got divorced yet,” she said, “so everybody was like: ‘Psst, psst, psst.’”
By the time she graduated high school, she was modeling extensively in New York, Tokyo and Milan, but craving work as an actor, producer and musician.
She has since found those opportunities on shows like “Breaking Bad” and the teenage noir “Veronica Mars,” as well as in projects she has developed with her production company, Silent Machine.
Photo
Ms. Ritter has embraced the flawed but powerful title character she currently plays on the Netflix superhero drama “Jessica Jones.” Credit Myles Aronowitz/Netflix
Gren Wells, a screenwriter, director and friend of Ms. Ritter’s, described her as “psychotically driven, in the best way.”
“In this industry, you have to be a self-starter and make your own career,” Ms. Wells said. “She’s not the type of actor who sits around and waits for a phone call. She will create her own product.”
Ms. Ritter said she placed particular value in her experience on “Jessica Jones,” based on that Marvel heroine, a wisecracking private investigator still coping with the trauma of a villain who invaded and took over her life.
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“It wasn’t until after the show came out,” she said, “ that real women on the street would tell me how ‘Jessica Jones’ changed their lives — how it helped them deal with their own past sexual trauma.”
After several of those interactions, Ms. Ritter said, “I started to think in different terms. It made me want to be even better. It made me want to give it all.”
Ms. Ritter was already committed to playing the Jessica Jones character in another Netflix series, “The Defenders,” and while she waited for it to start shooting, she was dismayed with the film roles she was being offered in the meantime: sundry strippers and wives of husbands who were “like my dad’s age,” she said.
“No, I don’t want to do that,” she said. “That’s not what I want to put into the world.”
Instead, Ms. Ritter spent several months writing “Bonfire” at her home in Los Angeles, putting meat on the bones of an idea she originally had for a possible TV series.
Her writing process, Ms. Ritter said, “looks like me pacing around in flannel pajamas with a pot of coffee, jotting things down by hand.” On any given day, she said, “if you checked my pedometer on my phone, I probably walked 10 miles, back and forth in my home.”
When Ms. Ritter would run into creative roadblocks, Ms. Wells said, “They would last no more than 24 hours, because she didn’t have time. She was trying to finish this before starting on ‘The Defenders,’ so she had a hard deadline.”
Photo
Ms. Ritter said her novel was “an act of pure defiance”: a narrative she wants to see more of. Credit Andrew White for The New York Times
She might allow herself a few hours to knit or take a walk, Ms. Wells said, “and then she was back off to the races.”
Melissa Rosenberg, the creator and show runner of the “Jessica Jones” TV series, said that she saw similarities in how Ms. Ritter approached her acting work and the writing of “Bonfire.”
“Krysten really works from the inside out,” Ms. Rosenberg said. “She cares about the internal workings of a character — how does this person move or talk? — and that informs the world they inhabit. As an actress and a writer, how she’s bringing an audience into her experience through the various choices she makes, which are sometimes just incredibly subtle.”
What Ms. Ritter and Jessica Jones share, Ms. Rosenberg said, is a sense of humor: “Jessica’s is a bit darker, on an ongoing basis,” she said. “She’s more about a one-liner and a wry look. Krysten laughs loud and she laughs easily.
Jennifer Schuster, the executive editor at Crown Archetype, said she saw in “Bonfire” a wealth of storytelling talents that Ms. Ritter has gleaned from her onscreen career.
“She had a great eye for developing a complicated, messy female character — the kind of character that you recognize some of yourself in,” Ms. Schuster said. “Some of your own fear, some of your own darkness, some of your own secrets.”
Having recently wrapped production on a second season of “Jessica Jones,” Ms. Ritter is now on a promotional tour for “Bonfire” and exulting in the sense of freedom that the project offered her.
It’s a feeling that Ms. Ritter said reminded her of an earlier phase of her career, when she started moving away from modeling and appearing in her first TV commercials.
Recalling that era, she said, “I finally have control. It’s not all about, like, how pointy is your nose? I mean, I have a pointy nose. But what am I supposed to do? It’s what God gave me.”
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NOVEMBER 18, 2017 6:00am PT by Michael O'Connell
A Novel Idea: Krysten Ritter Looks to Adapt Breakout 'Bonfire'
"I've optioned other people's books," says the 'Jessica Jones' star and now lauded author. "IP helps. People want proven material."
Getty Images
"I've optioned other people's books," says the 'Jessica Jones' star and now lauded author. "IP helps. People want proven material."
When Krysten Ritter realized that her percolating idea for a thriller wasn't quite working as a TV pitch, she decided to turn it into a book instead.
Now that the 35-year-old actress' debut novel, introspective thriller Bonfire, published Nov. 7 to raves … her pitch is now infinitely more appealing. "That was kind of the idea," says Ritter, with a laugh. "I have a company [Silent Machine] and I've optioned other people's books. IP helps. People want proven material."
Ritter knows the power of IP well. The titular star of Netflix and Marvel's Jessica Jones (and companion The Defenders), she's part of what's arguably the most formidable franchise in pop culture — a status that helped her promote Bonfire. "I think if I didn't have those Comic-Con and Marvel experiences ahead of time, I'd have been nervous," Ritter says, half-way through a two-week book tour. "But, turns out, this is the best part."
Bonfire, which follows a young lawyer who's reluctantly drawn into the drama of the hometown she's tried to forget by a case, is already drumming up interest for adaptation. Writing the book also gave the author an outlet she wasn't expecting.
“I love my acting job more than anything, but I get in my car when I’m told and I act when someone says, ‘Action,'" Ritter says. "I have to harness that creativity on someone else’s time. This was a way to do it on my own time. That said, I still had a hardcore deadline."
This story first appeared in the Nov. 15 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
Krysten Ritter Wants More Complicated, Imperfect, Not-Always-Pretty Characters
That's why the actress wrote her first novel, Bonfire.
BY ESTELLE TANG
NOV 18, 2017
Krysten Ritter grabs my hand and pulls it towards her. But the actress—whose black-as-hell hair and mad-as-hell scowl have graced darkly dramatic shows like Jessica Jones and Breaking Bad—isn't trying to tell my fortune or, like, fight me. She's just trying to make me smell nice.
"Let me give you a little dab. Oh, that's a lot...whatever," she says as she liberally anoints my left wrist with frankincense oil. (Living Libations is her shit, by the way.) "Rub it on your neck, take a good breath of it," she directs, demonstrating. "I do this on set, too, the entire crew. These are my vibes."
Bonfire Krysten Ritter
Bonfire is out now. BUY
CROWN ARCHETYPE
In some ways, her vibes inform the hard-won habits of Abby Williams, the protagonist in Ritter's new thriller, Bonfire, whose compulsive habits help her feel in control of her surroundings. "I can relate to that," explains her creator, "because when I leave the house, I have to have my chapstick, I have to have my hand cream, a bottle of water, my essential oils. Otherwise I can't do it."
Abby, who successfully flew a wretched small-town coop to become an environmental lawyer in Chicago, returns home to investigate potential damage wrought by a giant corporation. The case reawakens anxieties about her hometown of Barrens, where she was bullied ceaselessly, although her chief torturer eventually vanished, leaving no clues to her whereabouts.
Ritter is used to being the focus for her on-screen endeavors, but talking about her first novel is a little different to doing the rounds for cult TV shows. "It's definitely scary, because this is something I made with my brain and my hands," Ritter says. "And now here it is—it exists."
The flashbacks to Abby's past really heightened the novel's tension. Being a teen, that's such an emotional time. Why was it important to you for Abby to deal with that as well as the present day?
You have such a rich emotional life when you're a teenager. We all know what it feels like to be an outcast, or a loner, or to fall between the cracks. To be the target of gossip or people talking about you, or girls are ganging up on you. One minute they're your best friend, the next they call you on three-way....That shit, when it's happening to you, feels like the end of the world.
I felt connected to it still because I have a sister who's much younger than me. Sometimes she would tell me stories...nothing like what's in the book, which is fiction. When she would tell me what was going on at school, I would be like, "Oh my God." It transports you in time to those feelings. And that's all stuff that you carry with you your whole life.
What I wanted to play with, with Abby, is the systems and mechanisms you put in place for survival. And at some point as an adult, things change. Maybe those things you tried to put under that rug are there still. And they're even heavier; you're carrying around this backpack full of dumbbells. So in order to unpack those things, you gotta look back. We all have that.
I couldn't help but make the connection between Abby and Jessica Jones, because both have such a lonely struggle. How did you evoke that headspace?
BAILEY TAYLOR
What they have in common is that neither of them had a safe place. If you don't have that in your life as a child or as a teenager, you're going to be a loner. So that is something they have in common. But to me, the characters are very different. Sure, they're both complicated, and complex, and flawed, and imperfect, and not always pretty, and don't always make great decisions. But that could be said of any human being: of me, of you, of everybody. That's the kind of women and characters that I'm drawn to, because that's relatable and real.
I used my own feelings as the way in and then you begin building and imagining and creating on top of that. So if Abby never had a safe place, and felt like she didn't have control over a lot of things, she was mistreated by her dad, her friends at school, her mom passed away...she has no control over anything. What are some things she would do to feel in control? Then you get the obsessive hand-washing, you get the counting of things.
A lot of actresses talk about the importance of creating the characters they want to see.
That's exactly what I did. Originally, I thought that this idea would be a great TV series. Then I realized that this idea might lend itself to working as a book. After the first season of Jessica Jones, the phone was ringing more and I'm fortunate in that. But the parts were not that good. Jessica Jones is such a great part, and I do serious work on it. I feel really creatively fulfilled. I get to do stunts and great drama and work with great scene partners and also be funny. That's a high bar.
"I DIDN'T WANT TO PLAY THE WIFE OF SOME GUY MY DAD'S AGE."
It shouldn't be.
I know, it sucks. I didn't want to play the wife of some guy my dad's age. This gave me the opportunity to explore themes that I wanted to explore, instead of waiting for the phone to ring. I'm a really proactive girl. I don't wait for people to tell me.
You've said that the process and headspace of writing this novel wasn't that different to preparing for Jessica Jones.
My favorite part of Jessica Jones is...all of it. When they wrap, I'm still there on set digging around for 30 minutes. But one of the great things is the deep prep work: the backstory building, the creation. In a lot of the scenes, she doesn't have any lines. But you're not doing nothing when you have no lines. That's my exciting opportunity, where I get to go and create all of that stuff. So I'll write pages and pages, and think about that.
And with Bonfire it was just that. And there was then no walking onto set afterwards, which was pretty freeing and pretty cool. It was just the deep character work that I like to do and think about and get into—and have my protective bubble and pace around and kind of get lost in the world. I love getting lost in worlds.
Jessica Jones Krysten Ritter
Ritter in Jessica Jones
NETFLIX
Like Abby, you're from a small town. It seemed important for her to put it all behind her. What about you? How did you formulate a vision of your future when you were a kid?
I didn't really know what I wanted to be. You know, they'd have those assemblies at school, with the list of careers? Nothing really spoke to me. And there's a lot of pressure. My sister is in college now, and that's a lot of pressure on young people, to plan the rest of their lives at 18. I was scouted at the mall as a model and I was brought to New York and sent around to all the go-sees and magazines, and met cool photographers and hot musicians. All of a sudden, I was like, "Wow, look at this whole world, look at this city." I got here with my bag and my Streetwise Manhattan map, a hard copy map! A whole world opened up to me. But I wasn't a little kid who was like, "Oh, when I grow up, I want to be an actress." Nobody said, like, "Chase big dreams."
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Krysten Ritter on Her New Novel and Why Women Like "Messy" Characters
The actress discusses her fiction debut, Bonfire.
By Eliza Thompson
Nov 8, 2017
106
BAILEY TAYLOR
You likely know Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones, or maybe as Jane from Breaking Bad or the titular b---- from Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23, but now you can also add her name to your list of favorite authors. On Tuesday, Krysten released her debut novel Bonfire, a thriller that follows a lawyer named Abby Williams as she returns to her hometown of Barrens, Indiana to investigate a corporation suspected of poisoning the town's water supply. As her investigation proceeds, though, Abby uncovers a bigger mystery that forces her to face her own demons. It's a page-turner in the vein of Gillian Flynn and Ruth Ware, authors that Krysten herself loves. Here, Krysten explains why she wrote Bonfire, why Abby is the way she is, and what she took from her own life when creating the fictional world of Barrens.
CROWN ARCHETYPE
BUY NOW Bonfire: A Novel, $17
What made you decide to write a novel?
It was an awesome way for me to have creative control and tell a story that I wanted to tell, and create a character and in my own way play a role that I really wanted to play — and do it on my own time, from my house, in no makeup, and not having to be on or looked at. I’ve been writing for a long time. I was writing screenplays, movies, pilots, and then I was reading a lot of books. Bonfire was kicking around for a very long time. It was an idea I wanted to explore for a television show. Then I was given this weird gift of time when Jessica Jones finished season one. I got really organized and just kind of banged it out, but it took a long time. It took two years to even have a first draft.
You grew up in a small town yourself. How much did you draw on your own experience when creating Barrens?
I always use myself as a way in and then from there embellish and create and imagine and it becomes fiction of course. I wanted to explore themes of having something buried in your past that you’re running from or that you think you’ve left behind, and then when you become an adult, those survival mechanisms that have helped you survive for this long don’t work anymore. You think you bury something but really it’s still there, and it becomes crippling and you have to go back and face it in order to truly move forward. That was where Abby started in her character breakdown. Those are all the things that I wanted to explore. Those are all things that I think are relatable to almost everybody, women especially.
Aside from Abby and her inner life, the book is also about this monstrous corporation, Optimal. Were there any real-life events or companies you thought about while writing?
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Yes and no. Optimal is kind of a red herring for her dealing with her actual personal demons. Years ago [in my hometown], one of the fracking companies started showing up on people’s land and offering them not very much money — a couple thousand dollars, but that could be life-changing — to frack on the land, not telling anybody what the repercussions are. That if you frack over there, there could be runoff, it goes into the stream, the stream then runs down the hill, feeds the cows, or they’re in the water, they’re eating grass that is near there, or it could contaminate your well. So that was something I thought about, in terms of the little guy getting screwed sometimes in areas of the country that we don’t look at as often. Then after I was developing this story line, all of this stuff was happening in Flint, Michigan, and there was a real awareness brought around.
Abby in many ways reminded me of Jessica Jones, minus the superpowers. Why do you think you keep finding yourself drawn to such complicated, challenging characters?
Well, I’m a complicated challenging woman! We all are. That’s what I gravitate toward. After Jessica Jones came out, I started hearing firsthand from a lot of women who were so inspired by the character, who felt represented, who felt like watching Jessica on screen helped them in their own lives. Women are devouring content like that because everybody is complicated, not everybody is one thing. Nobody’s right all the time. I think we’re connecting to these messy characters because we’re all messy. We all have weird shit that we do and weird tics, and when you see it on screen you’re like, "Maybe I’m not so weird after all, maybe I embrace this instead of trying to hide it." I’m drawn to complicated characters because I’m complicated, and so are you, and so is the woman outside my window.
I remember when Jessica Jones first came out I saw a lot of men complaining about her outfit, but that's what you wear when you're hungover and you're rolling out of bed and putting on the first thing you find. It's what any of us would wear.
I fought hard for that. Jessica doesn’t give a shit what anybody thinks about her clothes. That was an act of defiance. The character does have a couple pairs of pants, she just doesn’t think about it. I see her going to the store grabbing two or three pairs, whatever, and I wanted her to look really lived in and not care. She’s not looking for anybody’s gaze. She doesn’t want anybody to say anything about her clothes. She doesn’t want a woman to be like, "Cute outfit." She doesn’t want a guy to be like, "You look hot." So she hides herself in a boxy jacket and whatever jeans and some fuckin' tough boots. She does not care about those things at all. The character looks rugged and dirty because it’s real.
As you were working on Bonfire, what was the comment you heard most often from your editors?
Obviously the legal stuff is tricky because I’m not a lawyer so I had to do a lot of research, and there were many drafts of those scenes where she’s trying to get a subpoena to get the books for the past five years. I had to research, like, how does that actually go down? There were definitely times where those passages would be overwritten and then it was going through and slashing and burning. I was describing the steps of how to do this, but my character wouldn’t describe the steps — it’d be shorthand for her because she is a lawyer. When you understand something, you have a shorthand about it. If you’re just learning something it can read like VCR instructions. So it was really about finding that balance.
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What has it been like working in the entertainment industry as all these allegations have come out? How has it impacted your day to day life?
I’m really fortunate in that I’ve almost exclusively worked with women the past few years, and I’ve been in an environment where women are the bosses so I’m so fortunate to have been in a position to feel safe and thrive. But reading all of the stories makes me sick. It makes me absolutely sick. And it also makes me remember all the little feelings that you have. There was one thing I read, I think it was with a television writer. She would go to meetings when she was young in her little cute dress and they would say, like, "Oh, your script’s really good, did you have help with it?" Reading all of this stuff brought back so many times I’ve felt that way. It’s so frustrating, and so many times it’s passed off as normal, or you make it normal for yourself because "it’s how it is." I’m fuckin' sick of it too. I’m glad that this conversation is happening and that people are speaking out. This shit’s gonna stop. It’s a new day and things are gonna shift. It’s gonna be so awesome when we start to really see the results. We’re not gonna see them right away. Like, I looked at a couple scripts that were sent over and they’re all like male movies with shitty female parts, but those are scripts that were already written. I think now that we’re having these conversations, the scripts that we’re gonna see in two years are gonna be different. So I feel optimistic that shit’s blowin’ up. People are sick of it and it’s a real time for change and that’s exciting because now we have a chance to make it better, and how great is that?
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Krysten Ritter Talks Bonfire, Her Debut Novel Starring a Protagonist to Rival Jessica Jones
By Frannie Jackson | November 7, 2017 | 3:46pm
Author photo by Bailey Taylor
BOOKS FEATURES KRYSTEN RITTER
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Krysten Ritter Talks Bonfire, Her Debut Novel Starring a Protagonist to Rival Jessica Jones
When Krysten Ritter wrapped up filming her starring role in Marvel’s Jessica Jones Season 1, she knew that Jessica would be a tough act to follow. So when she wasn’t getting offered complex roles—cliché strippers and boring wives just didn’t cut it—she decided to write one herself. The result is Bonfire, Ritter’s debut novel that’s part legal-thriller, part-psychological drama. And, of course, it stars a three-dimensional female protagonist worthy of joining Jessica’s ranks.
Bonfire opens as environmental lawyer Abby Williams returns to her rural hometown for the first time in 10 years. She believes that Optimal Plastics, the town’s most high-profile business, is poisoning the water. But her investigation slowly spirals into a nightmare, as Abby becomes convinced that a girl’s disappearance when they were teens a decade ago is linked to Optimal Plastic’s corruption.
Readers may notice similarities between Jessica and Abby: they’re both heavy-drinking loners who don’t play well with others. But the similarities end there, as Ritter has crafted an original—and compulsive—protagonist.
“Abby has a lot of things that she does in order to feel in control,” Ritter tells Paste in a phone interview. “She keeps moving. She has a clean apartment with nothing in it. She’s created order in her life.” But Abby’s controlled façade crumbles when she’s forced to confront past traumas. “She’s at a point in her adulthood where that shit ain’t working anymore.”
Ritter, who says her favorite part of acting is the prep work for a character, approached Abby’s story the same way. “When I’m breaking in a character like Jessica Jones, I have this amazing opportunity to create her backstory. It’s all of the work that happens before I’m ever on camera…Writing Bonfire was like doing all of that fun stuff; it was like 300 pages of prep work.”
It’s obvious that the elements reminiscent of Ritter’s on-screen work are what make Bonfire a compelling thriller. The chapters read like short scenes. The first-person narration catapults you into the protagonist’s mind. Abby’s unreliable narration leaves you on the edge of your seat, as you question the veracity of remembered events.
This makes even more sense when Ritter says that she originally pitched Bonfire as a TV show. “But because it has the parallel story of the teenagers, that narrowed down what kind of network it could be at. People were like, ‘What if you don’t do the teen part?’ Well, the whole point is that something happens to teenagers at a bonfire; that is the basic pitch.”
Rather than reframe the plot to appease TV execs, Ritter chose to write it as a novel. She completed the first draft in the break between filming Jessica Jones Season 1 and The Defenders, the companion show starring all of Netflix’s Marvel heroes. And today, “five minutes after finishing Jessica Jones Season 2,” Ritter jokes, the book is out in the world.
Now a successful storyteller in multiple mediums, Ritter reveals she wants to write another book. “It’s hard work and requires a lot of discipline, but I love that you have something you can hold in your hands at the end.” Knowing Ritter, this means another novel featuring a kickass female character.
It can’t come soon enough.
Ritter’s work on and off the screen demonstrates a crucial truth: strong female characters aren’t at their strongest when they’re literally or figuratively winning a fight (although that is glorious to behold). They’re strongest when they recognize their vulnerabilities and push on regardless. These are the kinds of women the world needs right now. And thanks to Ritter, we’re witnessing more of their stories.
< In 'Bonfire,' Krysten Ritter Digs Up Dirt Both Environmental And Emotional November 3, 201711:46 AM ET 7:16 Download LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST: The actress Krysten Ritter is best known for strong and complicated characters like the superhero-turned-detective Jessica Jones, the star of her own Netflix series. Ritter was raised in a small Pennsylvania farm town, which inspired her debut novel "Bonfire." It's a dark thriller about environmental pollution, secrets and abuse. KRYSTEN RITTER: I'm from a small town, from a farm - 100 acres. A few years ago, the frackers came in and wanted to frack on the property. They would - came in and made it seem really appealing and were like, OK, so we're just going to dig on your land - not really telling them, like, what the environmental consequences would be. And that was something that I thought about a lot in terms of, like, wanting to set this in a small town and have, like, a small crime and subterfuge happening where everybody's kind of in on it and trying to cover it up. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Krysten Ritter joined me from our studios in New York to talk about her book and its protagonist, Abby Williams. She's an environmental lawyer from a difficult background. Her mom died when she was young, and she was kind of an outcast in school. The story begins when Williams comes home to Barrens to investigate why people are getting sick. RITTER: (Reading) I swore many times that I would never go home. But now I know better. Any self-help book in the world will tell you that you can't just run away from your past. Barren's has its roots in me. And if I want it gone forever, I'll have to cut them out myself. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Cutting out your roots - I think that resonates for so many people who look at their childhood or their upbringing and don't necessarily have happy memories. She's haunted by what happened to her when she was growing up. Why did you want to have a character like that come back to this town? RITTER: Well, it's real juicy storytelling (laughter). Thematically, I like playing with the ideas of stuff that you try to bury and you think will go away, but instead you carry it with you until it becomes crippling. And sometimes you have to, like, look back and deal with some stuff in order to really move forward. You know, I relate to, like, going home and feeling... GARCIA-NAVARRO: I was about to ask, like, did this happen on a trip that you made home? RITTER: I definitely used my own feelings as a way in and things that I relate to. But it's fiction from there. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Well, I hope so considering the - we're not going to give too much away. But I would hope that it is fiction from there because it's a pretty dark tale. RITTER: Totally, totally... GARCIA-NAVARRO: Very dramatic. RITTER: It's definitely dark. It's - you know, it's really - it definitely is a dark book. But there's some humor. I think Abby has a self-awareness that keeps it alight at times. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, she's a likeable character. She's a... RITTER: Thank you. GARCIA-NAVARRO: ...Definitely. RITTER: Thank you. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, definitely. Speaking of darkness, Jessica Jones is a survivor of rape. And the show was lauded for its portrayal of that. This is a moment in time when many women, especially in your industry are talking about sexual assault. And many women are finding that discussion empowering. How has the discussion impacted you? I mean, you were discovered at 15. You worked from when you were very young in this industry. RITTER: Yeah, I did. And it's crazy because I hear all of these stories and I think about all of the things that I've witnessed or felt, and it makes me sick. You know, I'm always asked what the importance of, like, female anti-heroes or messy characters are on screen. When I first started talking about it, it was after Season 1. And I always, like, circled it back to good parts - wasn't until the show came out that real women in real life were come up to me and talk about how they felt seen and they felt represented. And because of that, they were able to heal from their own sexual assault or sexual abuse. And that hit me. I was, like, wow. This is like so much bigger than parts. The more messy women that we put on screen, that we put in books, the more women can feel represented and seen - that way can access their own stuff - feel it's OK and then have the strength to speak out about things like we're talking about - about rising up. So I feel like, you know, a great privilege and honor to get to play Jessica Jones - but in that, I've learned so much about myself, about how it actually affects other women, how it actually can move society forward. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Do you feel as though that's what's happening now? RITTER: I do. GARCIA-NAVARRO: It's changing? RITTER: I do. And now that just makes me want to, like, do this even more because you're, like, seeing an unconventional woman carrying a show. You're like, yes. That messy character is important enough to have a show. I can be who I want to be, too. And then if you get more comfortable in who you are, you can then, like, rise. So I think that is what's happening. I think the more mess that we see, the more we're going to be OK with our own mess. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Do you have a story to tell? I want to give you the opportunity. RITTER: Listen. I have a million stories to tell. I have felt so many times, like - where there's a certain, like, category of men or certain age even where it's like, you come in. You shake hands with all the dudes and then you say, like, oh, hey, Krysten, you look pretty. Ugh (laughter), you know? It's hard. It's hard to always, like, be reduced to the way you look or your sex appeal or your - or what that is. I've spoken up when things didn't feel right to me. Sometimes it has consequences. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Consequences how? RITTER: Well, there was one situation that I had a long, long, long time ago, right? So, like, there's this guy who would, like, always kind of, like, touch the small of my back as I walked into a room. And I didn't like it. Finally, I said, like, could you not do that? I really don't like when you touch me like that. This person completely shut down and then became, like, ice cold to me and made my working experience really difficult and really unpleasant. So that's the consequences. So I could have just, like, kept giggling and letting him, like, whatever, touched my back, or said something, felt good about myself and then felt like (expletive) for the rest of the time. So that's a consequence that I felt. And I think that that consequence was worth it. GARCIA-NAVARRO: I just want to circle back to the book. Is there going to be more of Abby, the crusading environmental lawyer? RITTER: I want to know what happens next, what happens next in the emotional life for someone who's like, OK, they've been carrying around this thing that eats at them every night, this thing that makes them drink too much. And now they go back and they dig and they uncover it. And now they have some resolution. And she leaves it behind and is ready for the next step. What does that look like? What really happens next? Does it go away? That's the stuff that I'm interested in moving forward and after falling in love with this character. I would love to explore. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Krysten Ritter's new book is called "Bonfire." Thank you so much. RITTER: Thank you so much. (SOUNDBITE OF SAXON SHORE'S "LAST DAYS OF A TRAGIC ALLEGORY")
Bonfire
Publishers Weekly. 264.36 (Sept. 4, 2017): p64.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* Bonfire
Krysten Ritter. Crown Archetype, $26 (288p)
ISBN 978-1-5247-5984-1
Actress Ritter (Marvel's Jessica Jones) makes a triumphant fiction debut with this pulse-pounding thriller featuring a sympathetic, broken lead character. Ten years after leaving her hometown of Barrens, Ind., Chicago attorney Abby Williams returns as part of a legal team considering civil litigation against Optimal Plastics, a corporation whose chemicals may have caused illness and damaged crops. The professional challenge is daunting: Optimal has bought off much of the town, including a prosecutor who began a case against the company, until it swelled his campaign coffers for political office. Abby finds links to a case from more than a decade earlier, the disappearance of popular Kaycee Mitchell. On the personal side, Abby is unable to escape the grip of the past: a claque of mean girls relentlessly bullied her during high school, and her one surviving relative is her abusive father, who's declining mentally and physically. Abby's noirish worldview (she divides humanity into "the people of the world who squeeze and the ones who suffocate") is pitch-perfect, and Ritter effectively uses Abby's present-tense narration to create immediacy. Agent: Stephen Barbara, Inkwell Management. (Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Bonfire." Publishers Weekly, 4 Sept. 2017, p. 64. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A505468051/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f1ed51ca. Accessed 16 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A505468051
Ritter, Krysten: BONFIRE
Kirkus Reviews. (Sept. 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Ritter, Krysten BONFIRE Crown Archetype (Adult Fiction) $26.00 11, 7 ISBN: 978-1-5247-5984-1
A young environmental lawyer returns to her small Indiana hometown to investigate pollution by a regional plastics giant--but settling old scores and healing old wounds weigh heavily on her mind.Abby Williams left the aptly named Barrens, Indiana, for Chicago as soon as she turned 18 and never looked back, trading the equivalent of a one-horse town that prizes football and rifles for a sleek apartment and a nameless parade of men she doesn't have to love. Now an attorney with the Center for Environmental Advocacy Work, she's headed back to the last place she ever wanted to go, but this time with a mission: take down Optimal Plastics, the corporate giant that's allegedly polluting the town's water supply. Along with an eager team of millennials, Abby returns to Barrens to find it both unchanged and almost unrecognizable: the high school girls who used to torment her have grown up and one is even the school's vice principal, but the town's allegiance to Optimal is still strong. In Abby's day, there was a spate of unexplained illnesses, led by Abby's former best friend, and later biggest foe, Kaycee Mitchell, who displayed bizarre signs akin to either mass hysteria or perhaps environmental poisoning. When Kaycee ran away after high school, the other girls confessed it was a hoax. Now Abby's not so sure, as she digs deeper into Optimal's deep ties to the town, some benign and some much more malignant, all while wrestling with her own, somewhat predictable, demons that Ritter (best known for her television role on Netflix's Jessica Jones) tries admirably to spice up. A fast-paced thriller that doesn't reinvent the wheel but introduces a tough female lead who's easy to root for.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Ritter, Krysten: BONFIRE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Sept. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A502192408/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=225f5a85. Accessed 16 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A502192408
Bonfire: A novel
Krysten Ritter
Library Journal. 142.11 (June 15, 2017): p3a.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
From actress, producer, and writer Krysten Ritter comes a psychological suspense novel about a woman forced to confront her past in the wake of small-town corruption.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
978-1-5247-5984-1 | $26.00/$35.00C | 100,000
Crown Archetype | HC | November
* 978-1-5247-5968-5 | * AD: 978-1-5247-7899-6
* CD: 978-1-5247-7898-9
THRILLER/SUSPENSE
Social: Facebook.com/KrystenRitter RA: For fans of Luckiest Girl Alive. Gone Girl, and Sharp Objects RI:Author lives in New York, NY and Los Angeles. CA
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Ritter, Krysten. "Bonfire: A novel." Library Journal, 15 June 2017, p. 3a. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495668149/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c5a8c4db. Accessed 16 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495668149
Ritter's 'Bonfire': Lots of smoke, little flame
James Endrst
USA Today. (Nov. 8, 2017): Lifestyle: p04D.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/
Full Text:
Byline: James Endrst, Special to USA TODAY
The most burning question surrounding Krysten Ritter's literary debut isn't whether there will be any interest in her efforts. She already has legions of fans from her starring role in Marvel's Jessica Jones on Netflix and her memorable turn on AMC's Breaking Bad.
So, yes, it's a given that Ritter will have an enthusiastic audience waiting for an autographed copy of Bonfire (Crown Archetype, 276 pp., **1/2 out of four) when the actress/producer/former model/now-author kicks off her book tour this month.
The question isn't even whether Ritter is a capable writer. (She is.) The question is whether readers will even care or notice that Bonfire isn't so much a psychological thriller as it is a steady march of go-to tropes. The protagonist, Abby Williams, has so much in common with the anti-hero superhero/hot mess Ritter frequently plays onscreen that you feel you already know her.
Abby is returning to her rural hometown of Barrens, Ind., a place she has spent every day of the past 10 years (after graduating high school) trying to forget and literally scrub away. But now her work, and her past, are calling her back.
"Barrens has its roots in me," Abby tells us. "If I want it gone forever, I'll have to cut them out myself." (And, in case you forget, Abby will tell you again and again in a narrative style that seems as if it should always be preceded by the words "Dear Diary.")
Abby is an environmental lawyer in Chicago. She's a success, but she's not happy. She's still haunted by the mean girls who tormented her, the boy whose kiss may or may not have been real, the death of her mom, her abusive dad, and every kind of dysfunctional side effect a suffocating small-town life has to offer. ("All I know is that Barrens broke something inside of me," Abby explains. "It warped the needles on my compass.")
But more than anything else, Abby is fixated on what happened to her close friend Kaycee Mitchell, the bad girl (or was she just troubled?) who disappeared after a major scandal. As expected with the turn of each page of Bonfire, it turns out there may be a connection between what became of Kaycee and what's going on with Optimal Plastics, the big, bad company that more or less owns Barrens.
And the deeper Abby digs into the polluted business of Optimal (in between her too-many drinks, hookups and near-hookups), the closer she gets to the ugly truth about Barrens and an evil ritual known as "The Game."
If it all sounds familiar, it should. There's never, in fact, an unfamiliar moment in Bonfire. One minute it's Mean Girls, the next it's Friday Night Lights, Twin Peaks, True Blood, you name it.
Bby the time Ritter is finished, the story is officially old and tired, more Jessica Fletcher than Jessica Jones.
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Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Endrst, James. "Ritter's 'Bonfire': Lots of smoke, little flame." USA Today, 8 Nov. 2017, p. 04D. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A513935263/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=41d95422. Accessed 16 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A513935263