Walter White fans will know Jessica Hecht from her Breaking Bad role as Gretchen Schwartz, but here’s which other movies and TV shows she’s been a part of. Jessica Hecht began her acting career back in the mid-1990s and her first big job came with a recurring role in Friends as Susan Bunch, the girlfriend and eventual spouse of Ross Geller’s ex-wife Carol. During her tenure on Friends, Hecht also had bit parts on shows like Seinfeld and Law & Order: SVU, plus a main role as Janeane Percy-Parker in sitcom The Single Guy.
In the early 2000s, Jessica Hecht nabbed a main part in the ABC sitcom What About Joan? as Betsy Morgan and later had a two-episode stint as a breast cancer patient in season 12 of the medical drama ER. She appeared in several movies too, including playing Victoria Cortland in Alexander Payne’s award-winning Sideways and a role as the best friend of Julianne Moore’s protagonist in sci-fi horror The Forgotten. She also had a small part playing the sister of Steve Carell’s character in the 2007 comedy-drama Dan In Real Life.
Jessica Hecht made her Breaking Bad debut during its first season and appeared in a total of five episodes as Walter’s former flame and college lab partner Gretchen Schwartz. During that time, she also had one-off appearances in the likes of The Good Wife and Medium alongside a three-episode stint as Dr. Donna Kenwood in Bored To Death and a biographical film role as political activist Emma Goldman in Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar.
Post-Breaking Bad, Jessica Hecht had a two-episode guest role as businesswoman Elizabeth Bridges in the CBS sci-fi crime drama Person Of Interest and later played Rebecca Horowitz in the Amazon series Red Oaks. She also appeared in movies including mystery-thriller The Sisterhood Of Night, indie comedy Banana Split and had one-off roles on series like Jessica Jones, Madame Secretary and Quantico.
The past few years have been pretty busy for Hecht too. In 2019, she played an editor named Michelle Pantsil looking to write a book about media mogul Logan Roy in two episodes of Succession and had a small role as Lila Vogel in the Fred Rogers biopic A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood. That same year, Hecht began playing Aunt Lavinia in comedy-drama Dickinson and nabbed a main role as Karen Hayes in the Emmy-nominated series Special.
In 2020, she had a multiple-episode part in The Boys as Church of the Collective spokeswoman Carol Mannheim and took on the role of main character Harry Ambrose’s love interest Sonya Barzel in The Sinner. Most recently, Jessica Hecht played Amy Gurley (wife of Uber venture capitalist Bill Gurley) in the Showtime series Super Pumped and had a small role as Jake Adelstein’s mother in the HBO Max adaptation of the journalist’s memoir Tokyo Vice.