Can I admit something? I sort of came around on Jessica Biel as an actress. I used to think that she couldn’t really act her way out of a paper bag, but as she’s grown as an actress a great deal in her 30s and 40s. It really helped when she committed herself to producing her projects (mostly on TV/streaming) and choosing which stories would be her best showcase. Now, do I still think she’s a nutty anti-vaxxer? For sure. But I’m actually looking forward to her new series, The Better Sister, which she produced. That’s why she covers the latest digital issue of InStyle, to promote the limited series. She spoke at length about her husband Justin Timberlake, moving into producing, and her sons. Some highlights:

The Better Sister: “I initially read it and thought, Oh, this is thought-out, because you keep dropping these little pebbles. Oh my gosh, another bombshell just exploded. Oh, there’s another bombshell, you know? It keeps you salivating for more—this kind of soapy, quirky, funny, dark, traumatic story.”

She has a lot of ‘chosen sisters’: “I would also consider my husband one of my chosen sisters,” Biel adds with a chuckle. The next part is earnest: “He’s also my best friend. All of them together have gotten me through my life. I don’t know how I would have survived life without them.”

Her support system: “It really takes a village to raise any kid, let alone in a wild business like this where parents are traveling for long times for work,” she says. The goal in the Biel-Timberlake household is to alternate which parent is away—“sometimes we do a good job; we try to have one of us working full time, only one”—an effort to provide their children a sense of stability. “It doesn’t always happen, because the opportunities arise and the timing is what it is. You just have to take advantage of it.”

Visiting with Timberlake during his tour: “It’s nice to give him some support. It sounds so glamorous, tour life. It’s so lonely. They just go from hotel to airplane to car to hotel to venue to airplane to car. There’s a lot of recovery required to sing and dance. What they do on stage—his entire team—I’m in awe of these people.”

Advice for working moms. “My producing partner, Michelle, she said one thing to me a long time ago. She goes, ‘Listen, all you can do is: When you’re working, you’re 100-percent working, and when you’re home, you’re 100-percent home. Do not take a work call when you’re at home with the kids. If you do it half-ass, you’re not good at anything.’ That was a good piece of advice.”

She’s on social media, but mostly for work: “I still think there’s something to be said about keeping a little bit of a mystique. Maybe that sounds crazy. It probably does, because I’m from a different generation, and that was part of what I was taught in this business: You don’t share everything. You share some things, and you keep a little mystery going on. It’s part of the smoke and mirrors of being in the entertainment business. We don’t do that anymore. We tell everybody everything, and there’s something really freeing about that, and refreshing. I understand that side of it, too. I still feel like your private life is your private life, and that’s okay.”

Coming up in Hollywood as a teenager in the ‘90s: “I don’t know if I would have survived it [today]. You remember what it was like to be a teenager: You think you have it together. You make these huge mistakes. When we were teenagers it was okay to fail. Nobody can fail anymore. You make one small, whatever, error, mistake, something that you feel you could have done differently, and you can just get blasted for it. It’s a really crazy thing that’s happening for young people, because failure is so much a part of that growing up stage.”

Her son Silas is obsessed with tennis, so she took him to the US Open: “My son was 9 at the time, and he’s a huge tennis fan—that’s his sport, that’s what he plays. We had this opportunity, and we talked about it. We talked about photographers. You know, ‘Are you comfortable with that?’ He can’t make these decisions on his own, but at this point, we can at least discuss what’s his opinion around it.” Ultimately, Biel chose to enjoy the mother-son date. “You really want to give your kids every experience. I don’t know if it was the right decision, to be honest with you, but he and I had a good time. … It’s scary every time. But it’s also their life. And so it’s this really tricky, tricky thing to figure out, what’s appropriate.”

[From InStyle]

The comment about Justin’s lonely life on tour is funny… I’m sure that’s what he tells her, that it’s a lonely life on tour, and that he needs to rest in between shows. But y’all know that man gets up to all kinds of things when Jessica isn’t around. I didn’t know her son Silas is really into tennis – Justin is too, he used to be a regular at the US Open. I wonder if they’re encouraging him to eventually turn pro? Interesting. As for how hard it is for young actors coming up today… it is difficult, I agree, and there’s less room to screw up. But I also think it was really difficult for Biel and actresses of her generation to grow up in that toxic, misogynistic cesspool that was Hollywood in the ‘90s and early ‘00s. It’s different now, but that doesn’t mean it’s better or worse.

Update: I watched The Better Sister over the weekend, and while an eight-part series is a significant time commitment, I thought the series was really good, well-paced and it had great performances. Elizabeth Banks is especially great in it, but Biel did a good job!

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.