SAN DIEGO — Lean and slightly awkward, Jason Ritter is suddenly finding himself as the guy riding to the rescue. Here he is, starring in the sci-fi action thriller “The Event,” one of NBC’s more promising new shows. He plays everyman Sean Walker, who’s caught up in a global conspiracy involving extraterrestrials after his girlfriend went missing.
Jumping off cliffs, hijacking airplanes and giving chase aren’t the types of things the 30-year-old Ritter, the son of the late comedian John Ritter, expected to be doing in his career. That’s OK. Sean wasn’t prepared for it, either.
“Out of all the action characters I would expect to play, he would be the only one,” Ritter says, laughing. “He’s basically a regular guy. He doesn’t have training in anything or special skills.
| ON TV |
| “The Event” |
| » When: 9 p.m. Monday (returns Feb. 28) |
| » Where: NBC |
| » Info: nbc.com/the-event |
“He’s a computer guy. He’s smart. He’s aware of his surroundings. But he’s really just a guy who’s been put in these incredible circumstances.”
Ritter has mainly spent his career doing indie-film work (“Raise Your Voice”), playing the best friend (CBS’s “Joan of Arcadia”) or being in sitcoms that never took off (CBS’s “The Class”). “The Event,” though, has him as the lead in a series NBC is pinning its hopes on.
“I was very careful about auditioning for roles over the past pilot season,” he says. “I knew if [the series] would take off, I might be playing the character for seven years or more. I wanted to make sure this was going to be the type of [job] I would be excited over … every day.”
Ritter’s pedigree didn’t automatically open doors in Hollywood. Despite his grandfather being legendary country star Tex Ritter and his father being a sitcom legend, Ritter is making his own way.
He usually auditions for roles and sometimes he gets compared to his father.
“I’ve certainly come a distance,” he says of his career. “This [role] is the farthest experience I have ever had in my human experience on this Earth.”
He goes home battered and bruised after a day of shooting. “Definitely at the end of the day, I feel like I have done something,” he says. “If I am sore, I have put it all on the line.”
He likes being cast as the “nice guy” or the “smart guy.” However, those roles come with a price.
“They are usually the wimp, and they finish last,” he says. “In action movies, the guy has to be sexy. Why can’t the hero be just a nice guy? There’s something interesting in that.
“I like [that] the guy I play is nice. He’s charming, and he has manners.”
Ritter knows, though, that those attributes will only take him so far as a real-life action hero.
“If I saw a young lady falling off a cliff, I would hope I would jump in after her,” Ritter says.
“But I’d probably just phone somebody for help.”
