Please raise your hand if you had a massive crush on Jeri Ryan after watching Star Trek: Voyager. Yeah, me too. The Seven of Nine actress was a late addition to the series, but she also increased the ratings for the show and became a fan favorite of not just Voyager, but Star Trek as a whole. Now reprising her role as Seven of Nine twenty years later, what has Jeri Ryan been up to in the time between?
Turns out she’s stayed extremely busy, bouncing between her starring roles in television and film while also raising a family. Jeri Ryan works with the efficiency of a Borg drone to this day, delivering consistent quality year after year.
Born in Munich, Germany, Jeri’s family moved around frequently due to her father’s job with the US Army until she was eleven years old. After her father retired from the military, he moved the family to rural Kentucky, where Jeri and her brother would spend the remainder of their childhoods.
Early Career
She discovered a love of acting at a young age, eventually going for a theatre degree in college before beginning work as a young actress. Jeri was everywhere in the early 90s, no television channel was safe. From her first guest role on Who’s The Boss to Melrose Place and Matlock, Jeri was making herself known.
In 1996 NBC attempted to make its answer to then-rating magnet The X-Files with Dark Skies. A supernatural and sci-fi drama with a big idea before its time, Dark Skies was canceled early on in the first season, but Jeri Ryan used the eight episodes she had put in work and get noticed.
Star Trek: Voyager
It paid off too, with Star Trek: Voyager looking to replace Jennifer Lien’s Kes due to the actress’s onset behavior, Jeri, after denying it three times, took the role of Seven of Nine. Debuting in the second half of the season four premiere, the un-assimilated Borg worked her way into the hearts of her crewmates and Trekkies everywhere.
Jeri Ryan took everything she learned in Dark Skies and applied it a hundredfold for Seven of Nine, playing a character recovering from the Borg assimilation and being stripped of her individualism. Seven had a cold badass exterior, which often brought her to disagreements with Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew, another legend) that would lead to a relationship much like Kirk and Spock between the two.
Seven joined the Voyager crew on their long journey home for the remainder of the series, clocking a total of 101 episodes before the finale in 2001.
After Star Trek
Worth noting Jeri also starred in Dracula 2000 around the same time, which still stands as a campy b-classic with a lot of surprising names. That was just the beginning of her career though, all things considered. She would go on to have a starring role in the ensemble drama Boston Public during its four-season run, before somehow appearing in the spinoff Boston Legal as a different character. Witness protection, maybe?
Through the rest of the late 2000s and early 2010s, she cycled through a few shows as either guest star or main cast, notably getting three episodes of Law and Order: SVU before jumping to Law and Order Criminal Intent a year later. As a totally different character. Again. you can’t keep doing this, Jeri!
Seriously, this woman is a machine. In the time between 2010-2011, she starred in those episodes of Law & Order, an episode of Two and a Half Men, an eight-episode run of Leverage immediately after she gave birth, landed another main cast role in Body of Proof, AND nailed the character of Sonya Blade in Mortal Kombat: Rebirth and Legacy. Most of that was in 2011 alone. Oh, she also starred in two Lifetime original horrors in 2010.
What is Jeri Ryan doing now?
Body of Proof kept her going for a couple of years before ending after three seasons. Jeri once again moved between shows and television movies, adding to her credits with shows like Arrow and Helix (gone too soon), before becoming a series regular on Bosch for the first season.
Jeri Ryan has since reprised the role in Star Trek: Picard, picking up more than twenty years after Seven’s last appearance in-universe. Currently, she’s due to be a regular in the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard and the show Dark Winds for season two.
That’s just her career too. Her personal life has been a whirlwind, from her first marriage to politician Jack Ryan (not that Jack Ryan) which indirectly helped Barack Obama win his Senate race in 2004. The couple had one son, Alex, in 1994 before divorcing in 1999 due to Jack Ryan’s reveal as being kind of a creep.
That said, bad times don’t last forever and she met her current husband Christophe Eme in 2003. A gourmet chef, Eme bonded with Jeri Ryan over their love of cooking, with the couple even opening a French restaurant in 2005 (which has unfortunately closed). The couple would marry in 2007 and welcome their daughter Gisele in 2008.
Still a foodie, Jeri Ryan spends most of her days not acting either being with children or cooking with her husband. She has also been a vocal advocate for the LGBTQ+ community and also currently sponsors Trek Against ALS, a fund started by Trek cast and crew to support Margot, her stand-in actress on Star Trek: Picard. Needless to say, her support and kindness are a nice light in some dreary times.
