Krysten Ritter On Playing Antisuperhero Jessica Jones

Yet, heading into her final week of press before the release of Netflix’s “Marvel’s Jessica Jones,” the actress was desperately staving off a sore throat before boarding a plane to New York City. The new 13-episode series focuses on a former superhero turned detective who, like the best film noir characters, battles demons external and, more particularly, internal. The character, best known for her appearance in Marvel’s “Alias” series written by Brian Michael Bendis, is struggling to come to terms with sexual abuse and its traumatic psychological consequences. “The thing about PTSD is that it’s not just a memory, it’s feeling like you’re back in that situation,” Ritter says. “Jessica Jones” becomes the second Marvel Television enterprise with a solitary female lead, joining ABC’s “Agent Carter” as a show that primarily chronicles the exploits of a female hero. “I have zero interest in portraying female sexuality as anything other than empowering and as a very natural part of our makeup,” she says. Jones is haunted by a mysterious character known as Kilgrave (David Tennant), who casts a frightening shadow over the heroine’s days and dreams. [...] he’s the monster of the tale. Given the intense subject matter, a series adaptation wasn’t an easy sell in Hollywood, even during an era when darker material seemed to be thriving and even earning Emmy Awards. “For the TV series to be true to the creative legacy of the ‘Alias’ comics, it must also contrast a hard, unflinching look at the effects of trauma and vulnerability with the superhero’s pretensions of perfect, unassailable power and morality,” says Justin Hall, cartoonist and California College of the Arts assistant professor of comics. “It’s shameful that television and movies have such a poor track record of female superheroes,” Hall adds.