You’d probably recognize actor Krysten Ritter from her starring role in the Netflix series “Jessica Jones.” Ritter has had a long and successful career as an actress, and more recently, she’s playing a new role: novelist.
Ritter recently published her second novel, “Retreat,” about a con artist named Liz. Liz lives an exhausting life — constantly assuming fake identities and trying to stay one step ahead of the people she cons out of money, priceless art, and jewelry. In the book, Liz takes a trip to Mexico, hoping to take a break from grifting. But as soon as she lands, she gets wrapped up in the most high-stakes con of her life.
Ritter will be speaking about her new novel at Changing Hands bookstore in Tempe on Thursday night. Ahead of her visit, Ritter joined The Show to talk about her creative process.
Full conversation
SAM DINGMAN: I think of the novel as one of the most character-centric forms of art. Like oftentimes the novel is much more about spending time in an individual person or several individuals’ heads and psyches as much as it is about following the plot.
KRYSTEN RITTER: There’s no more intimate medium with you and a character. I agree 100%.
DINGMAN: So I’m curious, as you set out to write “Retreat,” how literal was the connection between your character development process for somebody like Liz — the main character of “Retreat” — and how you would approach creating one of the characters you’ve played on TV.
RITTER: The same.
DINGMAN: Oh, the same. OK.
RITTER: I think it’s very similar. I kind of have been saying — and it sounds a little pompous — but I’ve been saying, like, “Creativity first, medium second.”
DINGMAN: Oh, I love that. I love that.
RITTER: It’s a little obnoxious, but it feels very true because the process for me is so similar. You really get in there and get under. And with Liz specifically, I wanted this character to be a role that would be so juicy to play. It’s a way for me to do the thing that I love in this little bit of a different format.
DINGMAN: Are you one of those actors who, when you’re creating a character from somebody else’s material that they’ve written for stage or screen, are you somebody who writes out like a character history and backstory and that sort of thing? Is that part of your process?
RITTER: Yes.
DINGMAN: Oh, really? OK.
RITTER: Absolutely. I mean, my scripts will look like crime scenes. They’re just covered. They are covered. I mean, I’m filming “Dexter” right now, and I got to set, the director saw my script and she was like, “Oh my God.” I was like, “What?”
DINGMAN: She’s like, “Can we use this for a set in the show?”
RITTER: It’s pretty funny. But it’s like everybody says: prepare, prepare, prepare and then throw it away. So the prep work usually for when I’m acting, it happens way before you set foot on set. You just write pages and pages and pages.
And then pretty much for every line, I’ll write what the subtext is, what the thought is. And it’s usually very different than what the line is. So all of that goes into building it. And then it’s kind of like in your cells, and then it goes away.
DINGMAN: Well, can I ask you — if you’d be comfortable sharing — could you maybe think of some role that you’ve played and give us an example of some detail that you came up with about that character in this process you were just describing that people would not know about it otherwise, but that it was really important to you to have thought of and worked through?
RITTER: You know, in “Jessica Jones,” which is probably an example of the deepest I ever got to do, there was always a touchstone for me that wasn’t really in the script. But I kind of had just decided early because of how Jessica Jones got her powers, she obviously really struggled with having powers, and I just decided that she has some contempt for her powers. Because she lost her family and got those powers.
And so she’s walking around with the weight of the world of that on her shoulders, knowing she has to do good with them but how she got them was so tragic. It’s not huge. It doesn’t change anything that we’re doing. But it was just like a little thing that I felt gave her this way to see the wound. If you can find those wound windows, you love her.
And that’s something that I really love doing with characters who make choices that aren’t necessarily likable. Like with Liz in “Retreat.” It was a big thing with Liz in “Retreat.” I wanted to have this con woman. But if we have her really rich backstory and see those wound windows and feel it when you’re reading it, the hope was that you’re going to go along with it.
DINGMAN: One of my favorite moments in the book, “Retreat,” that to me speaks to what you’re talking about, is we meet Liz at the beginning of the book, and she is just doing this amazing job of conning people, convincing them she’s not who she is, being incredibly smooth about it. She seems to experience almost no stress in this work that she does of convincing people she’s an art dealer or an interior decorator or whatever it is to steal their money.
And then you have this one scene a little bit into the book, where she sits down and she’s wearing a dress, and it says something like, “I sat down and I moved my leg, careful not to let my scar show.” And then all of a sudden as a reader, you’re like, “Oh! What’s that about?”
RITTER: Also when you’re a grifter like this and you don’t have people, you don’t have connections, you don’t have sturdy ground to stand on. You’re really kind of floating. And I think you get up to a point in your life where that’s not feeling cute anymore.
DINGMAN: Well, in Liz, we have this character who has made a very successful career out of pretending to be other people, inventing other personas out of whole cloth, convincing the people around her so effectively that she is these other people that they trust her completely. And then taking those personas off as easily as she put them on, leaving them behind completely and moving on to the next persona that is going to help her get a little bit further ahead.
And in my mind, that is somewhat similar to the work of an actor. And we also see in Liz this character who, as you alluded to, is kind of tired of having to do that all the time, exhausted of never getting to just be herself. And it was tempting for me to wonder if any of that was reflective of your own relationship with acting.
RITTER: It’s really interesting that you made that connection because it’s true. Sometimes I don’t even realize how true it is, but you play these characters fully. After “Jessica Jones,” I found myself unable to put on a dress. Just unable to do that.
And it kind of, like it does. It sticks in your DNA, and it sticks in your posture … a little bit. And then after time it starts to fade away.
I think with Liz — and where we meet her when she goes to Mexico — I don’t believe that she’s intending to do this. So I think it’s interesting if we’re on board with Liz wanting to reset, wanting to find a new path and all of a sudden kind of gets sucked into this wild thing that’s way over her head. What would happen if you were mistaken for somebody fabulous, and you had a couple of days — possibly risk free — where you could live a little life of luxury for a moment and be somebody that you’re not?
