In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporte, ‘Jessica Jones’ executive producer Melissa Rosenberg spoke candidly about producing the show, and what restrictions were placed on her by either Netflix or Marvel. As suspected, Netflix did not put a lot of restrictions on the show, but it seems Marvel had some very specific Dos and Don’ts that she had to abide by during Season 1 of ‘Jessica Jones.’ In her words:
“The beauty of working at Netflix is that you don’t have those limits. I also work with Marvel, and Marvel has a brand and their brand is generally PG-13. They’ve kind of let us go to PG-16. No F-bombs! And if anyone was going to say ‘fuck,’ it would be Jessica Jones. Sometimes I would be like, ‘Please just let me put one!’ Never. But what’s funny is that people said, ‘Wait — she didn’t say fuck? I could have sworn she did!’ Ritter can deliver ‘fuck’ with her face. Her look says it! She can be saying ‘potato.'”
I think I am in the camp that did not even realize they never dropped the f-bomb on the show, as it does seem to fit that world. Rosenberg also went on the discuss the only other place where Marvel told her to pump the brakes, so to speak:
“And the other thing is there’s sex to some degree, but there was not any nudity. But then people go, ‘Wait, there was no nudity? There was really graphic sex!’ It was all about the attitude and how it was shot and how it was acted with raw lust.”
Of course, the beauty of ‘Jessica Jones’ was that everything worked so well, and the characters were so enthralling, that these things barely registered (at least for me). If anything, I remember being surprised that Marvel had allowed any of the profanity that was in the show, or the sex scenes that I also thought were more explicit than anything we had seen in the MCU before.
What are your thoughts on Marvel censorship? Is it unfair that Kristen Ritter could never say the f-word but ‘Daredevil’ season 2 had the Punisher say it in the 3rd episode? Feel free to share your opinions on the matter in the comments below!
