Arguably the most popular Camden alum, the series’ wild kid is likewise the least most likely to go back to the fold. “I think I definitely sort of butted up against those limitations and those boundaries for a multitude of reasons,” she informed the Awards Chatter podcast in 2018 of her experience. “Because, yeah you know, you can only do so much with a particular character specifically on a show like that. We really had to sort of stay in the boundaries of a somewhat religious family and teaching lessons, and when, you know you’re 16, 14, 15, 16, you get to a point when you’re like oh man, I just want to do something different. I just want to cut my hair, and I just want to dye it a different color and I can’t do all these things because I have this contract.”
Ultimately she did cut her hair, she remembered and “I got in a great deal of difficulty for that. I needed to ask forgiveness to everyone, which is sort of the style of my experience on 7th Heaven. I was constantly saying sorry.” And this was prior to the then-17-year-old chosen to position topless for guys’s publication Gear in 2000.
Following her exit from the imaginary town of Glenoak, Biel focused primarily on movie functions, gathering parts in 2010’s The A-Team, 2011’s New Year’s Eve, 2012’s Total Recall and Hitchcock, 2016’s A Kind of Murder prior to going back to the little screen as executive manufacturer and star of Sinner in 2017.
“There wasn’t like a driving force behind it. I got on a path of doing films. But, as we all know, the film industry has become very limited. I wanted to take control of my career again, which is what I had in mind when I started this small production company,” she discussed to The Hollywood Reporter of forming Iron Ocean Productions with buddy Michelle Purple. “Also, television was changing: It’s become such an incredible place where if you have a thought-out, interesting, fresh idea, you have a great opportunity, especially as a woman, to put something on television.”
But given that her lead function in the splashy very first season, she’s focused mostly on voice work (BoJack Horseman, Pete the Cat) and the 10-part criminal offense series Limetown as she and partner Justin Timberlake raise their 5-year-old child Silas and last summer season’s arrival Phineas.<
