On karaoke nights, Jason Ritter likes to get in his feelings. The Parenthood alum says he typically goes for a Miley Cyrus song, but if wife Melanie Lynskey is around, he turns to Queen Bey.
“My go-to karaoke song is ‘Wrecking Ball’ by Miley Cyrus,” Ritter, 44, reveals exclusively in the latest edition of Us Weekly, on newsstands now. “Or ‘Sandcastles’ by Beyoncé if Melanie is there.”
Ritter first met Lynskey, 47, over a decade ago on the set of their movie The Big Ask. After sparking a romance, the duo went on to film two more movies together: We’ll Never Have Paris in 2014 and The Intervention in 2016.
“We’ve worked together a few times, and it’s always been really fun,” Lynskey told Us about working with her husband last year. “But I mean, I’ll do anything with him. He’s so talented. I love his face. I love looking at his face.”
The couple got engaged in 2017 before welcoming their daughter the following year. When Lynskey got cast in Yellowjackets and had to work in Canada amid the COVID-19 pandemic, travel restrictions prevented Ritter from joining her across the border. Their solution? Saying “I do.”
“I was like, ‘We have a child. What? I can’t leave for six months,’ so I was like, ‘We have to get married tomorrow,’” Lynksey said on SiriusXM’s “The Jess Cagle Show” in May 2022. “We got married on our front porch of our little rental house in Atlanta. Nice lady came and married us. We had two friends there.”
For 25 things you don’t know about Ritter, including his favorite way to spend a date night with Lynskey, keep scrolling:
The sneak peek of Ritter’s new show, Matlock, premieres September 22 at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.
1. I’m very good at quite a few video games.
2. As a kid, I collected marbles and pennies. I still appreciate a good marble.
3. My first job was cooking chicken and beef patties at a Little League field. It’s where I learned that chicken can look white and cooked on the outside and still be pink and raw on the inside! I also learned 100% of people don’t like lightly seared chicken in their sandwiches.
4. My first car was a Tonka truck.
5. My favorite wardrobe item is a hat I’ve worn since I was 8 years old. It has surfers on it, and I take it everywhere.
6. My favorite movie is Nights of Cabiria.
7. The actors I looked up to growing up were Giulietta Masina, Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix.
8. My alternate profession would be a live streamer of actual streams.
9. In school, I was weirdly good at math — to the annoyance of some classmates and friends. My brain just likes it!
10. My favorite way to spend date night with my wife is going out to dinner, but I’m just as happy ordering in and watching TV, even if we keep pausing it to chat (I’m usually the pauser/chat-starter).
11. My comfort food is Salt & Straw’s Salted, Malted, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream.
12. Three items I can’t leave the house without are shoes, a shirt and cell phone service.
13. My fondest childhood memory is winning a game of hide-and-seek so thoroughly that the babysitter left the park we were at to find my parents and tell them she couldn’t find me.
14. My favorite thing about being a dad is watching [my daughter] experience new things for the first time, helping [her] navigate fears and anxieties, laughing together and sharing some of my favorite shows and movies with her.
15. After working with Kathy Bates on Matlock, I’ve learned that sometimes, you should meet your heroes. She’s as kind as she is incredibly gifted.
16. I relate to [my Gravity Falls character] Dipper Pines the most out of all my roles because I love solving puzzles and my siblings, I have a favorite hat, I’m a bit awkward and I sound like him.
17. There was a time where one of my best friends and I were going through our parents’ divorces, and we found out both of our dads were listening to Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping” a lot. It made us laugh together. That song has a special place in my heart.
18. My typical Uber Eats order is chicken tikka masala, very hot, no rice and roti.
19. I’d like to do an outer space thriller with at least some zero gravity scenes.
20. My go-to karaoke song is “Wrecking Ball” by Miley Cyrus — or “Sandcastles” by Beyoncé if Melanie is there.
21. The best advice I received from my dad [John Ritter] is to not put too much stock into what other people say or think about you, bad or good. (Still trying to figure out how to do that one).
22. My favorite book is The Phantom Tollbooth.
23. I’m binge-watching the show Scavengers Reign right now.
24. Hearing Paul McCartney’s lyrics “For well you know that it’s a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder” [in “Hey Jude”] set me free in middle school to stop trying to be cool and just be authentically … not that.
25. I was obsessed with Kurt Cobain as a teenager and exclusively listened to Nirvana for many years, so I have huge gaps in my knowledge of music from about 1992 to 1998.
