Matlock star Jason Ritter has been working for 35 years but in the past 13 years has also been supported, and was supported by, wife Melanie Lynskey, an actress in her own right.
For one of the first times in their relationship though, both Jason and Melanie have critical and commercial success with their TV shows Matlock and Yellowjackets, respectively, and it’s a moment for which the pair have been eagerly waiting.
“We both feel so lucky and grateful and, you know, it very rarely lines up this way,” he tells HELLO!
“Sometimes there can be times when one person is having a great time and the other one is struggling, and we have been through those times and we’ve both supported each other through that,” he continued, “so it’s nice to have this moment where we’re both like, ‘I think we’re OK!’ But it’s all part of the ups and downs of marriage, and it’s nice to be in a nice period – we couldn’t be luckier.”
In 2024, Melanie told HELLO! that she was “so lucky” while filming the harrowing drama The Tattooist of Auschwitz because Jason and their daughter joined her while filming in Bratislava leaving her “filled with joy in seeing their faces”.
“My daughter’s five, so I’m not going to sit there and weep in front of her, but she’s a very empathetic little person,” added Melanie. “Sometimes you just need to come home and have a bit of a cry and have someone ask what you want for dinner and I was coming home to the best possible little bubble of happiness and joy. I’m just feeling so lucky to have that.”
Viewers may know Jason, 45, from Parenthood, or Joan of Arcadia, but he now plays Julian Markston, a senior partner at law firm Jacobson Moore that the titular character, Madeline “Matty” Matock, joins.
Oscar winner Kathy Bates stars as the septuagenarian lawyer, alongside Skye P. Marshall and David Del Rio, and it’s been an experience Jason still can’t wrap his head around being a part of.
“She’s so collaborative,” he says of working with Kathy, 76, sharing how despite her decades in the industry she still wants to “listen to notes”.
“I think it’s so easy for all of us, the longer we are around, to solidify creatively and just say, ‘No, I don’t want to do that because I know what feels comfortable to me,’ and to watch her take in new information, put it through her filter and try something different and throw herself off a cliff [is incredible],” he shared.
As for his favorite moments on set?
He says it’s getting to watch Kathy work: “She’ll be doing this beautiful, incredible take and in the middle she’ll say, ‘That’s that’s bad.’ Then she comes in and she does it 20 times better and I’m like, ‘OK, well, if I was doing that first one, I would be like I’ve had a great day, an award winning performance!'”
