Who says you only get one chance to pop the big question?
Melanie Lynskey recently revealed that her husband Jason Ritter re-proposes to her “all the time.” In an interview for Shut Up Evan: The Newsletter — which took place before the SAG-AFTRA strike — the Yellowjackets star, 46, shared the sweet reasoning behind the unusual practice.
Ritter, 43, popped up in the interview as a surprise guest, asking the question, “Will you marry me (again)? Please get back to me as quickly as possible. Thank you. Bye!” In response, Lynskey laughed and called her husband’s question “cute.”
“That’s a little inside joke,” she said. “The first time he proposed, it wasn’t great. So he re-proposes all the time to make up for it, which is really cute.”
The pair met while costarring in the 2013 film The Big Ask and went on to announce their engagement in 2017. They married in 2020, opting for a small, private ceremony on their front porch in Atlanta with just two friends in attendance, Ali Ahn and William Jackson Harper. The couple shares one child together, a daughter, whom they welcomed in December 2018.
In a May 2022 interview with SiriusXM’s Jess Cagle, Lynskey explained that the two exchanged vows before she left to work on Yellowjackets in Canada, fearing that Ritter wouldn’t be able to be with her otherwise.
“Honestly, I got married because someone was like, ‘Jason won’t get into Canada unless you’re married,’ which just wasn’t true,” she explained. “I was going to Canada for Yellowjackets, and I was on the phone with somebody, and they said, ‘Oh, he won’t be allowed in.’ And 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.’”
“We got married on our front porch of our little rental house in Atlanta,” she added. “It was actually a very fun wedding day, but it didn’t need to happen. He could totally have gotten into Canada.”
The couple have worked together multiple times over the years. In addition to The Big Ask, they costarred in 2014’s We’ll Never Have Paris and The Intervention in 2016.
Lynskey was previously married to actor Jimmi Simpson from 2007 to 2014.
In March, Ritter opened up about struggling with alcoholism during the early days of their relationship. In a joint appearance with his wife on The Drew Barrymore Show, he shared that he realized he wanted to become the kind of partner that Lynskey “deserved.”
“At a point, I knew how amazing she was, and I thought she would be incredible for someone who deserved her, basically,” the Parenthood actor said. “And I didn’t feel like I was that person. I thought [I was] a little bit too crazy. It was only after like 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.’ It’s been like a slow burn.”
He added: “I knew she was incredible. It was working on myself enough to feel like maybe I can be the one for her, too.”
The Candy actress later gushed over her beau and his remarks during an interview with Entertainment Tonight. “There was something about his willingness to have a conversation, always,” she said in April. “Even in our darkest and most difficult moments, which there were a few, he would always talk about it. He’s always very willing to take responsibility and he’s kind. He’s kind to people. That’s the most important thing to me.”
On Shut Up Evan: The Newsletter, she added that she “did not know” that he was going to bring up his past struggles at the time. “And I’ve been on the whole journey with him. There was a time where it was really tough for him to talk about it. I think for a lot of people with addiction issues, it’s very hard to own it,” she said. “And so for him to be so public and so okay with whatever the response was gonna be — the response was incredible and I do think it really helped people.”
She continued: “And then of course, Jason is in his comments replying to every single person who writes to him about their struggles because he’s such a beautiful human being.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.
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