Jeri Ryan has spent a quarter of a century being hired to be the most composed person in the scene, and she is good at it. The question, as Shark made plain, is whether anyone gives her something to do once she is there.
Fi1m perspective
In Shark (2006) Jeri Ryan's Jessica Devlin hires James Woods's reformed defence lawyer because he wins cases, and then spends the series watching him because she does not trust him. Ryan plays the watching well. She stands a step back, lets Woods finish, and answers in a voice a shade cooler than his, and in those exchanges the show has a pulse. Then the scene ends and the writers send her back to being wary, which is the one note they wrote for her, week after week.
That is roughly the story of her career. She had a regular part as Juliet Stuart on Dark Skies (1997), then joined Star Trek: Voyager mid-run the same year as Seven of Nine, a former Borg drone learning to be a person again, and stayed until the series ended in 2001. She has said she "wasn't remotely interested in science fiction" beforehand; the part became the one she is known for. After it came Boston Public (2001–2004) as Ronnie Cooke, one of three jobs with David E. Kelley, then Shark (2006–2008), Body of Proof (2011–2013) as Kate Murphy, Bosch (2016–2019) as Veronica Allen, and a return to Seven of Nine in Star Trek: Picard (2020–2023).
Look down that list and the casting habit is plain: authoritative women in legal and procedural drama, the district attorney, the medical examiner, the person behind the desk who knows better than the hero. The odd thing is that the quality critics keep noticing in her is the opposite of the desk. On Voyager they saw a woman rediscovering feeling and manners, played with humanity and some humour, in a show that was often camp around her. The standing criticism attaches to the same part: the costume and the publicity of her introduction sold the character on sex appeal first, and she has said since that it was not handled well.
Watching Shark, we found ourselves wanting the camera to stay on her after Woods had gone, because there was a character in the way she held herself that the script never bothered to find. It never did, and we were irritated on her behalf. Ryan is sharp opposite a strong lead, and the procedurals that hire her tend to treat that sharpness as furniture: something for the star to bounce off, never something the episode is about.
The obvious place to see what she can do with a part written for her rather than around her is Seven of Nine, in either era. Everything else is a matter of whether the writers of the week remember she is there.
Biography
Jeri Ryan is an American actress. She played Jessica Devlin in the legal drama series Shark (2006–2008).
Born Jeri Lynn Zimmermann on 22 February 1968 in Munich, Germany, she grew up on US Army bases across several states and graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in theatre. She was named Miss Illinois in 1989 and finished third runner-up in the 1990 Miss America pageant.
Ryan is best known for her role as Seven of Nine in Star Trek: Voyager (1997–2001) and reprising the character in Star Trek: Picard (2020–2023), for which she received Saturn Awards. Other credits include Boston Public (2001–2004) and Body of Proof (2011–2013).
