Jessica Biel said the “7th Heaven” reboot will have “less limitations” than the squeaky clean original show that premiered in 1996.

Biel, who starred as Mary Camden in the show about a minister and his wife and their seven kids, said the reboot, which she will help produce, will tackle issues facing modern-day families, like technology, bullying, drugs and alcohol.

“All those things we want to address in a very real way,” Biel said on Thursday’s episode of Collider’s “Ladies Night.”

She said that while the original series “gently touched on” those issues, “we were very careful about what our audience wanted. We had a lot of limitations. We have less limitations now. We still want to keep the DNA of what it was, where you can sit down and watch with your families, but we’re not going to hold back as much as we did before.”

The original show, which ran from 1996 to 2007, was a family drama, where the storylines took on everything from drugs and teen pregnancy to gun violence and faith. The show has been criticized for its heavy tone of faith, and one publication said it was “one of the worst long-running shows on television.”

But Biel said the idea of rebooting the show was in part because she’s looking for something on TV to watch with her own kids, who are 11 and 6.

“It’s limited,” she said. “You cannot watch a lot of these things with them, and they love TV and it’s my business.”

Biel left the series as a main cast member at the end of Season 6 after she posed topless for Gear magazine when she was just 17 years old. Biel told the magazine at the time that she was doing the topless photo shoot so that Aaron Spelling, the producer of “7th Heaven,” would drop her from the show.

A year later, Biel said she regretted the photo shoot but had learned from the experience.

Biel said the reboot will focus on “faith, family and community” and not be “so jaded.” Variety reported in 2025 that none of the original cast members would return for the reboot.

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