Credit: Getty

Jessica Biel is opening up about her upcoming 7th Heaven reboot.

The 44-year-old actress starred as Mary Camden on the original WB/CW series and while she is not reprising her role in the reboot, she is signed on as an executive producer.

In a new interview, Jessica talked about her role as producer on the show on how they are planning to modernize the series.

1

Jessica Biel talks producing 7th Heaven reboot

“When I’m on set as a producer, I’m always thinking about the safety net of the set and the communication that you hope you can have — free-flowing communication with your actors and your crew,” she told Collider about producing.

“You just want to create a safe place for people to be really creative and really vulnerable, because a lot of the stuff that I’m doing now, the content that I’m doing now, it’s emotional stuff. It’s people really putting themselves out there on the chopping block emotionally, and if you don’t have that space protected, I think it’s hard. It’s hard to give those kinds of performances,” Jessica added. “So, I think that’s what I’m constantly trying to do as a producer is just build out that space where everyone feels like they will be taken care of, and it’s safe, you know?”

“What we want to create, how we want to modernize it, is really the things that are happening for teenagers and families that have teenagers all the way down to the youngest child — technology-based issues, school stuff, bullying stuff, drugs, alcohol,” Jessica shared. “All of those things we want to address in a very real way, which is, I think, what the original kind of gently touched on, but we were very careful about what our audience wanted. We had a lot of limitations. We have less limitations now.”

“We still want to keep the DNA of what it was, where you can sit down and watch with your families, but we’re not going to hold back, I think, as much as we did before,” she continued.

The original 7th Heaven series ran for 11 seasons and followed the Camden family — parents Eric and Annie and their seven children: Matt, Mary, Lucy, Simon, Ruthie, Sam, and David. They lived in the town of Glen Oak, Calif., where Eric was a Protestant minister.

Jessica played the eldest daughter Mary in a starring role for the first six seasons, went down to a recurring role in season seven, and only appeared as a special guest in seasons eight and ten.

Joining her on the series included Stephen Collins, Catherine Hicks, Barry Watson, David Gallagher, Beverley Mitchell, Mackenzie Rosman, Nikolas Brino, and Lorenzo Brino, as well as Ashlee Simpson, Tyler Hoechlin, Rachel Blanchard, and Haylie Duff in later seasons.

Posted To:7th Heaven Jessica Biel Television