Krysten Ritter's trade is the hard, funny woman who has decided not to be liked, and television has used it far better than film has. Her best work is in parts we have not reviewed; the parts we have reviewed barely let her in the door.
Fi1m perspective
In Love & Death (2023), a seven-part series about a Texas church affair, Krysten Ritter is the only one allowed to be funny on purpose. Her Sherry Cleckler comes in, says the sharp thing, and leaves the scene lighter than she found it. That is the Ritter habit: whatever the show around her is doing, she finds the dry line inside it and delivers it without asking permission. She has said as much herself: "Even when we're doing something that's really dark, I always like to find the flip of that."
She began as a model, scouted at fifteen in Pennsylvania, and came to acting through commercials and small parts in the early 2000s. The turn was Jane Margolis in Breaking Bad (2009–2010), a part that grew from a few episodes into a much larger one, and it fixed the type she has played since: the woman with a tongue and a wound, who is not the hero's reward. Don't Trust the B---- (2012–2013) gave her a first series lead as Chloe, a protagonist built to be disliked. Then came Jessica Jones (2015–2019), with Melissa Rosenberg running the show, a noir about a private investigator carrying damage, followed by The Defenders (2017) and, later, Daredevil: Born Again.
What critics have noticed is the same thing: a tough, sardonic woman with more feeling underneath than she wants to show, and a face that does a lot of the work in both a fight and a quiet scene. The recurring criticism is the other side of that: she is more herself in the lighter moments than in the heavy ones, and Jessica Jones, a series built on trauma, is the usual example. We have not reviewed it and will not judge it here.
The two things we have reviewed use almost none of this. In Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024) her Director Rockwell exists to announce that the hedgehogs are dangerous and to be wrong about it, and that is the whole of it. Love & Death is the better showing, and it is still a supporting turn in a series we thought three episodes too long. We found ourselves waiting for Sherry to come back, and resenting a series that had seven hours and spent so few of them on the one person who knew where the jokes were. That is a compliment to Ritter and a complaint about the writing.
Film has never worked out what to do with her, and it is not obvious that it is trying. Television gave her a lead, a long run and permission to be disliked, which suited her. If she is to be more than the sharp woman in the third scene, someone will have to write her a part the size of the one Rosenberg did, and on the evidence we have it will not be a hedgehog film.
Biography
Krysten Alyce Ritter is an American actress. Born on 16 December 1981 in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, she began her career as a model before moving into acting. Early television roles included appearances in Veronica Mars (2005–2006) and Gilmore Girls (2006–2007).
Her breakthrough came as Jane Margolis in the AMC series Breaking Bad (2009–2010), a role she reprised in the 2019 film El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie. She later starred as the title character in the Netflix series Marvel's Jessica Jones (2015–2019) and appeared in the crossover series The Defenders (2017). Other notable credits include the sitcom Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 (2012–2013) and the film Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024), in which she played Director Rockwell.
Ritter has also directed episodes of television, performed as a singer and guitarist in the indie rock duo Ex Vivian, and published the novel Bonfire in 2017.
