The Bold Type's Katie Stevens Talks Jane's Big Relationship Decision

Vlada Gelman
·10 min read

Warning: The following contains spoilers for Thursday’s The Bold Type. Proceed at your own risk!

The Bold Type‘s spring finale officially declared Jane and Ryan’s relationship status as “Over” on Thursday night.

More from TVLine

After watching her BFF Sutton call Richard her “truth” during their wedding vows, Jane realized that she had to end things with her beau, aka Pinstripe. In a tearful scene, she explained to him that she couldn’t let her fear of being alone through her double mastectomy stand in the way of doing the right thing.

“Hopefully, it won’t be the end of Pinstripe and Jane forever, but for the time being, I think that it is smart to have the two characters separate and kind of have Jane have an experience, moving forward, that’s her own,” star Katie Stevens tells TVLine. “What does that look like for her now going through the surgery? How does she deal with that on her own? ‘Cause he’s been there for everything: all of her injections and her doctors appointments and all of that. It is a really tough decision that she had to make to split apart from the one person who was always there for her through all of that [and] to now have to face that alone.”

Below, star Katie Stevens shares her emotional reaction to the breakup and reveals whether Jane might one day be able to forgive her cheating boyfriend.

TVLINE | I imagine you, like viewers, got really invested over time in the Jane and Ryan relationship. So how did you react to the breakup?
On the day that we filmed the breakup, I was inconsolable. I, literally, had to sit in a separate room from Dan [Jeannotte, who plays Ryan], because even though we have our own separate lives, for all intents and purposes, he has been my rock for the past three years. He’s always been that calming energy for me on set. So knowing that I wasn’t gonna have him around anymore — who knows what’s gonna happen in the future of The Bold Type, but at least for the foreseeable future — was so difficult for me. That breakup scene, all of my tears were really genuine. I couldn’t even get through a rehearsal without bursting into tears. I, literally, looked at the director, and I was like, “I don’t know how I’m gonna do this scene.” [Laughs]

TVLINE | Did you and Dan do anything to sort of mark the end of their relationship?
We had dinner and had a glass of wine together. I actually got to go over to his family’s house. His wife and his son, we all hung out together, and his wife cooked dinner, and it was really nice. He and his family have been family to me over the last couple years and have been such a wonderful support, since they’re all from Montreal [where the show is filmed]. So it was really lovely to have them, and we’re still good friends, and I still text him when things are going on on set.

The Bold Type Recap
The Bold Type Recap

TVLINE | How did you feel about the choice that Jane made in the finale? Do you think she should have broken up with him earlier in the season when he said that he kissed somebody else?


I don’t, because I think it’s exactly what Jane talks about: She thinks she’s known the whole time, but she wanted them to work so badly that she was just trying to push away all of those feelings, and anytime a red flag or a sign came up, she pushed it away as being about something else. A lot of us, when we’re faced with difficult decisions or things that we kind of want to be ignorant to, it’s easy for us to do that, because we don’t want to have to face the reality of it, and I think that at this point, she was faced with that, and she couldn’t run away from it. And then she had to make the decision that she had to make, and it’s exactly what she says in the breakup, which is, “If I stayed with you, it’d be for the wrong reasons, and it would be because I’m scared of all the things that I would have to face without you and the fear of not finding anybody again, but that’s not a reason to stay.” I loved that we told a cheating story where people are trying to work through it. Granted, it was worse than Jane initially thought. But I think that the better option is to show the real life of people [making] mistakes, and I think that Pinstripe did make a mistake. I don’t think he’s a bad guy. We watched him this season really, really try to be that good person, because he does love Jane, and he made a mistake. They tried to work through it, and unfortunately, it’s just not their time right now.

TVLINE | It was a little bit frightening how easily he was able to lie to her for so long.
Well, but I think that we did see that that wasn’t the case. When he lied about her sister-in-law, it really wasn’t his job to tell Jane. It was her brother’s. But we saw in the flashback that Jane has in Episode 9, where she’s seeing all these moments, all of those are moments that he was trying to tell her, and something came up. And that’s not an excuse. He should have obviously told her, but I think to the best of his ability, he wanted to, and in all of those moments, it was just too hard to hurt her. But I don’t think that it’s a choice of how easy it was to lie to her, because if you look back of the season, he was pretty distraught throughout all of those conversations and [about], “How much do I reveal? What will that do?” It was really tough even as actors, because we knew from Episode 1 that this was going to be what the finale was, and it was Dan’s job to, in all of those moments, find places of wanting to tell Jane and playing the torture of the lie. He did a really great job. It’s so hard, because he’s a good guy at the root of it, and he just f—ked up.

TVLINE | Not that she should forgive him, but could you imagine a scenario where she does and they reunite one day?
Yeah, he’s kind of like Carrie’s Big [in Sex and the City], and I think that they’re both going to have to do a lot of self-discovery and a lot of work on themselves in order to eventually even have a chance to be with each other. Jane needs to face the fact that she would rather be oblivious to things than have to actually face the truth of things, and she has to lean on herself in these times. In order to go through this surgery and whatever’s gonna come next after it, she needs to be able to be her own support. The past couple years, we’ve seen her, obviously, lean on the girls and lean on him and kind of look to be uplifted by all these other people. Moving forward, she’s going to be leading her own vertical, so she’s essentially going to be an editor at Scarlet, and she’s gonna need to really step into that role. So this is kind of the perfect time for her to be alone. But even if they don’t get back together, I hope that there’s a moment in the future where we see Jane and Ryan see each other again and be their best selves.

TVLINE | How much do we see the surgery and what she goes through play out in the back half of the season?
That, you’re going to see very early on. We’re all pretty bummed. We were in our last two episodes of the season [before production shut down due to the coronavirus outbreak], so we were like halfway through shooting 17 and 18, which were our final two episodes, and they’re so good. So I really hope that when all of this coronavirus craziness settles down, that we’ll have the opportunity to go back and just finish out those last 10 days that we had, because it’s a really incredible finale. But definitely the first half of the season is where you are going to see Jane, post-surgery, in her recovery and how she deals with this new reality that she has.

TVLINE | In the finale, Kat was fired from Scarlet.
Oh, my God, I wept! I wept watching that. I got to see a little bit of it when we did ADR, and then I watched that whole end montage with Kat getting fired and the girls being the emergency contact with Jane, and I was just a puddle of tears in that moment. It’s gonna be a new reality for all of them. It’s crazy. Kat’s not gonna be at Scarlet.

TVLINE | The girls spend so much time together. How does it change the dynamics not to have Kat there at Scarlet with Sutton and Jane?
The show is about the three of us, so they’re always going to be together, whether it be at someone’s apartment or at a bar or something. Just like when Jane, in the beginning of Season 2, was at Insight and the girls were FaceTiming her in the fashion closet, we’re still going to be doing that with Kat, too. We’re going to find a place [that’s] like our new fashion closet, but I don’t want to give too much away.

The Bold Type Recap
The Bold Type Recap

TVLINE | On a personal level, did you have a favorite moment from the wedding?


Oh man. It was really fun to film the scenes where we’re all drinking in the bathroom, trying to figure out if Richard’s going to come back. We had fun with those scenes. We do a lot of parties on the show, but we don’t do birthday parties or life events for any of these people, so it was really nice to have something like a wedding. But anytime that we get to do something where it’s all of us, those are kind of my favorite scenes, because those are the most fun days on set. Even though I had to do a breakup, which is really sad, it was still nice, because all of us kind of got to be together. I loved the wedding and the vows. We filmed that right after I did my own wedding, which was really fun.

TVLINE | I love that he ended up walking himself down the aisle.
I know! I thought it was so special. Obviously, it was an accident that Sutton happened to be at the end of the aisle, and Richard was the one who was walking down, but I thought it was really cute, and it spoke to our show and empowerment and all of that.

The Bold Type fans, what did you think of the episode? Grade it below, then hit the comments!

Best of TVLine

Sign up for TVLine's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.