Last May, Jessica Biel made headlines when she suddenly cut her hair into a “f-ck ass bob.” A lot of people assumed that it was a “divorce bob” and started a countdown to a separation announcement. That separation announcement never happened, and people forgot all about the bob. Turns out the real reason for the drastic new hairdo was for her role as Chloe in Amazon Prime’s The Better Sister. (TBS is what Jessica was filming in both NYC and the Hamptons when Justin Timberlake’s world tour was ruined last July.)

All episodes of TBS dropped at the end of May. Jessica did a lengthy interview with Deadline recently where she talked about the series. Here are some highlights:

She relates to Chloe’s struggle to maintain the perfect public persona: That’s definitely one of the parallels that she and I share. I do know what that’s like. And there is a separation on some level of who you are at work and who you are at home, at least in my business. But I think that’s true for many businesses. I do relate to that side of her job and her life, and she has a lot more hard, extreme secrets that she’s keeping. But it doesn’t matter, I still understand that presenting in a certain way. But I also feel like everybody understands that now, with our social media lives and what we want to curate to show the world. We all do that on some level.

On using Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and Anna Wintour as inspirations: I started thinking about just those legacy New York families and those women who are effortless in that world, in those power media spaces, or fashion. Even somebody who is just born and bred in that world and knows how to carry themselves and is super smart, goes to the right school, has the great interesting job, has amazing, interesting academic friends and artist friends. In her mind that is who she needs to be. And somebody like Anna Wintour would be that person who is just New York royalty and the Kennedys are New York royalty, but they don’t have to try. That’s just who they are. They’re part of those families. They’re part of the fabric of that place. She is not part of that, so it’s a lot of effort. Those women do it effortlessly and she has learned over the years how to do it pretty seamlessly, but you scratch under the surface just a little bit. And that Ohio — nothing against Ohio — but that particular family in that particular Midwestern kind of feel, it’s right there under the surface that she’s just trying to push it away.

On if she will direct: I’ve thought about it. Directing an episode or a couple episodes in a show that we’re producing that I really understand would be a really good, more safe learning environment. But I also really want to make sure that I’m not just hiring myself instead of hiring the right person for the job. It has to be the right thing. I really have to understand how to do it properly. I really want to make sure that I feel confident, so maybe. I think when my kids are a little bit older, it’s something that maybe I can engage with a little bit more. I feel like I’m just in that hot spot of time where I’m already gone from my family quite a lot and my little one’s still really young and I know parents are gone all the time, and female directors are leaving their families all the time. And I think it’s amazing. And I hope that continues to happen, and I hope we have more female directors that feel confident to do that. I just haven’t found the right thing. It hasn’t been the right moment. I haven’t had enough confidence in myself, I think, to say, “I really understand. I’d do this better than anybody else.” You know?

Is a second season in the cards? Well, I would say that I loved the experience. I loved working with our entire cast and [showrunners] Olivia [Milch] and Regina [Corrado], they were amazing. They just made such a beautifully safe and warm set, as I know we’ve talked about before. But for me, it’s always like, “OK, where’s the level of believability? Where do we begin again? Do we have enough to say?”…So, I would put a producer hat on at this point and go, “OK, so what are the options here? How are we going to be believable? Of course, we love seeing these women together. Of course, it’s so fun. How does it work? And is it enough to be as good or better than the first season?” So, I would ask those technical questions, but it was a dream job.

[From Deadline]

I watched The Better Sister in two sittings this past weekend, and really enjoyed it. There were a few resolutions that felt forced (Nan’s and Bill’s), but it was a really fun ride. It’s murder mystery meets courtroom drama meets soap opera, and it’s the perfect summer binge-watch. The acting was also great. Jessica, Elizabeth Banks, and Lorraine Toussaint turned in particularly powerful performances. I can definitely see the Carolyn Bissette-Kennedy and Anna Wintour influence in how she portrays Chloe. What she says about directing is also interesting. It sounds like she’s basically saying, ”Nope, I’m good!” without entirely closing that door.

I haven’t read the book The Better Sister is based on, (though now I want to!) but I know that there is a pretty major change to what happens to one character at the end of the book. After learning this, I assumed that showrunners were absolutely leaving the door open for a second season! On one hand, I’m surprised that she’s kinda shutting it down, but I appreciate that they aren’t automatically going the Big Little Lies route because their second season was not great, lol. I just don’t know why they did *that* plot change if they weren’t planning on a second season.

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Photos credit: Marion Curtis/Starpix for Prime Video/INSTARimages, TheStewartOfNY/INSTARimages