Melanie Lynskey and Jason Ritter started dating in 2013. Photo / Getty Images
Melanie Lynskey and Jason Ritter started dating in 2013. Photo / Getty Images
Kiwi actress Melanie Lynskey’s husband Jason Ritter has opened up about his struggle with alcoholism early on in their relationship.
Ritter and Lynskey began dating in 2013, welcomed a daughter in 2018, and married in 2020.
During an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show this week, Ritter admitted his alcohol abuse affected their relationship in its early days, telling host Barrymore that Lynskey was “incredible... but it’s not as cute a story as you would like to think”.
This led him to feel as though he wasn’t good enough, the actor admitted while tearing up.
“At a point, I knew how amazing she was and I thought she would be incredible for someone who deserved her, basically. And I didn’t feel like I was that person. I felt a little bit too crazy.”
By late 2013, Ritter had decided to stop drinking, but said the process of finding his own self-worth took time.
“It was only after maybe a year into not drinking where I started to go, ‘Oh, maybe I can promise some things to someone else. Maybe I can be this person’,” he told the talk show host.
Kiwi actress Melanie Lynskey and her husband Jason Ritter on the set of The Last of Us. Photo / Jimmy Fallon, NBC
“I knew that she was incredible. It was working on myself enough to feel like maybe I could be The One for her too.”
Lynskey, who held her husband’s hand throughout the interview, added through tears, “He worked so hard. He did so much work on himself, I’m so proud of him.”
Barrymore, Lynskey’s co-star in 1998 film Ever After, has also struggled with drug and alcohol addiction since the age of 11, and shared with the audience that she stopped drinking about four years ago.
“The narrative that one creates is that, ‘I can’t be with someone,’” she shared.
“And I haven’t been in a relationship since I stopped drinking, and I’m really looking forward to one day not having that bad girl narrative, the instability, the ‘I’m not someone who’s right to be with anyone for their sake’.”
Taranaki-born Lynskey recalled meeting her now-husband “in passing a few times through mutual friends”.
“And he always forgot me,” she joked. “And I would be reintroducing myself, like, ‘Is this guy for real?’
“And then we got cast in a movie together and we were both going through very difficult times in our lives. We were both going through break-ups.”
The pair co-starred in 2012 comedy The Big Ask. Lynskey was divorcing Jimmi Simpson at the time, while Ritter had just ended his relationship with actor Marianna Palka.
The Yellowjackets star revealed that she realised Ritter was “the one” after seeing him caring for her dog, which needed a lot of attention because of its old age.
“Jason would get up with her every single time and just take her outside and go back to sleep and get up and take her outside. And I think that was when I was like, ‘Oh, I could have a child with this man’.”
Lynskey continued to pay tribute to Ritter’s “infinite patience and kindness and love”.
