Jason Ritter Opens Up About the Pressure of Auditioning in His Father John Ritter's Shadow

Sep 04, 2026 by apost team

John Ritter died on September 11, 2003, one week before his 55th birthday, from an undiagnosed aortic dissection discovered on the set of "8 Simple Rules." He left behind, among many other things, a son who had chosen to follow him into the profession he had made look effortless — and who was about to discover how heavy that inheritance could be.

Jason Ritter, born Feb. 17, 1980, has been working as an actor for more than three decades. He is currently playing ADA Olympia Davis on CBS's "Matlock" reboot opposite Kathy Bates. He has appeared in "Parenthood," "Joan of Arcadia," "Raising Hope," and dozens of other projects. He has built a career entirely his own. And yet for years, every time he walked into a comedy audition, his hands shook.

The reason, he explained on the Brotherly Love podcast in an interview that resurfaced in a new PEOPLE piece published September 2, 2026, was a very particular form of pressure — the kind that arrives when someone in the room decides to begin by telling you how exceptional your father was.

"I would go into a comedy audition and my hands would just be like shaking," Ritter told the podcast. "So many times, people would be like:

'Oh, I just want to say before you start: Your dad was so funny.'"

He described what came next with characteristic self-awareness. "I love hearing that, of course, but hearing: 'He would open his mouth and we would be rolling on the floor,' and then I would open my mouth, look around, no one's rolling on the floor."

The way Ritter resolved the problem is both practical and poignant. He stopped trying to compete in the arena where the comparison hurt most. "The first couple of parts that I got were in the sort of more dramatic auditions," he told Brotherly Love, "because, for some reason, I didn't feel as much pressure or comparison or something like that." By leaning into drama rather than the comedy his father owned, he found a space that was entirely his own.

He has not lost the comedy entirely — or the connection to his father that sometimes arrives inside it. On Ted Danson's "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" podcast in April 2026, Ritter described moments where something unexpected takes over in auditions. "I would come in, and I would do it the way I had practiced a hundred times, and it was probably kind of rigid. And then every once in a while, a casting director would go, 'Try it this way.' And I go, 'Oh, that's great. I have no idea what to do there.' And I just sort of jump off the cliff and try it." In those moments, something arrived that did not feel entirely like him. "That didn't feel like I did that," he said.

He also described watching old episodes of "Matlock" — the original series, not the reboot he now appears in — and catching his father's face in his own. "I'm not aware of all of the ways in which he influenced me," he told Danson. "So sometimes I'll be watching Matlock or something, and I'll go, 'Oh my gosh, that was just so his face.'"

He is 46 years old. His father has been gone for 23 years. The face keeps showing up.

apost.com

Are you a fan of Jason Ritter and his work? Do you think his honesty about the pressure of following in his father's footsteps is something more people in Hollywood need to hear? Let us know in the comments and pass this on to your family, friends, and other fans out there!