Jessica Biel Talks Wine, <i>The Better Sister</i>, and Being a Boy Mom
Jessica Biel is standing at a place called Pocket Peak in Sonoma County, California, surrounded by golden hour light, verdant canopied vines and tilled dirt trails. The crystal embellishments on her black tweed Chanel bomber are glinting; the stained-glass sun is filling her hazel eyes. The multi-hyphenate star might be launching a brand new streaming series, The Better Sister, but right now she’s in town to celebrate the launch of a new wine called Prophet + Poet, on which she has partnered with her brother and sister-in-law, Justin and Rose Biel, the renowned winemaker Jesse Katz, and Ariel and Chris Jackson (you’ve likely heard of Kendall-Jackson wines, a product of their family’s). There are five Prophet + Poet types on offer: two Chardonnays, a Cabernet Sauvignon and two proprietary blended reds, with such romantic, brooding monikers as “Mourning Cloak” (named for a nocturnal butterfly that plays dead) and the almost musically coined “Broken Road” (named for a particular west-facing vineyard on Pocket Peak).
“It just felt like intuitive timing,” says Biel of her foray into the viticulture space. “We were making these wines for each other, so it just… it really happened authentically.”
To note, this is not just another celebrity alcohol brand: Prophet + Poet’s story goes back to 2019, when Biel gifted her brother and his then soon-to-be-wife a bottle of bespoke red. Katz was the engineer behind that bottle. He had also created a wine for Biel and her husband, Justin Timberlake, when they married in 2012 (Katz and the Biels grew up together in Colorado). The group has stayed close, and over time they decided to officialize their amiable collaboration. Prophet + Poet’s first run–all vintages from 2021–will tally only 900 cases total, with pricetags to match (these bottles’ stickers start in the hundreds of dollars).
“This whole process has made me really understand why wine moves people so much,” Biel adds as we step into the vines to snap some photos. “It becomes such a big part of so many people’s stories.” She mentions loving Super Tuscans, which she first discovered with Timberlake during their travels to Italy.
Biel has had a busy few days: She had been making press rounds for The Better Sister in New York City just 36 hours earlier. She then jetted home to Bozeman, Montana, to pack and regroup before flying into California. Coinciding with Biel’s wine launch, Timberlake would soon perform at BottleRock, the increasingly popular Napa-based music festival located about thirty minutes from where we’re standing. (While the musician was originally supposed to meet us at Pocket Peak, he stayed at the hotel with the couple’s two kids, Silas and Phineas.)
The Better Sister is an adaptation of a bestselling book by the same title, which was written by Alafair Burke and released in 2019. It’s a stylish thriller about a troubled family, tracking, in particular, the dynamic between two very different siblings: the seemingly put-together and polished Chloe, played by Biel, and the messier Nicky, played by Elizabeth Banks. There’s murder (Chloe’s husband, Adam, is found dead), there’s deception, there’s suspense and there’s beautiful real estate–from the trailer, the series’ aesthetic appears to deliver a glossy, Big Little Lies-esque sheen. (Another point: Biel and Banks are executive producers on The Better Sister too, via their respective companies Iron Ocean and Brownstone Productions.)
Elizabeth Banks (Nicky) and Jessica Biel (Chloe) in The Better Sister.
“Secrets upon secrets upon lies upon truths,” says Biel about the storyline. “That’s what I was drawn to with this project. There’s this thing between a perfect persona with an Instagram-able life, and then something completely different going on behind the scenes and inside the home. And then Chloe starts to show some really dark attributes. You see some really strange decisions. I thought, ‘How do we keep her likable? How does an audience follow that? Is it even possible?’”
Biel also credits the show’s great writing, led by co-showrunners Olivia Milch and Regina Corrado, with her decision to get on board.
“Normally I’m in much earlier,” she says of her production work. “This came at a little bit of a later stage. All the scripts had already been written. Of course, we talked about a few things and made some changes, and adjusted some things in post. But it was really, really solid from the moment I saw it.”
Biel says she enjoyed working with Banks. “She is amazing. She’s such a boss, she does everything–she directs and produces and acts and writes, and I thought I did a lot. She does everything, and she’s exactly who she is. Plus, she finds humor in everything.” The duo bonded beyond the screen, too: They’re both the mothers of two sons. “Being a boy mom is a thing,” she says, laughing. “You can look at another mom who has boys and you just know what she’s been through. You know she got hit in the head with a toy, then told she had a bad idea, then told that lunch was awful, then told ‘I love you,’ then given a hug.”
The sun is starting to fall behind a faraway ridge, casting a deep and dark purple wash over the valley. Our group has started tasting Prophet + Poet’s chardonnays inside.
Biel looks out to the jagged horizon: Even though The Better Sister takes things to an extreme, she concludes there is identifiability–and maybe even threads of a cautionary tale–between her character and reality.
“I think we can all relate to this idea of presenting a certain version of ourselves,” she says. “It’s topical. And, really… it’s human.”
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