Jessica Biel Crashed Her Parents' Car on the Set of 7th Heaven, Shares the 'Real Dirt About What Happened' (2025)

• Jessica Biel reflected on her time as Mary Camden on 7th Heaven on the March 30 episode of the Catching Up with the Camdens podcast, hosted by her former costars Beverley Mitchell, David Gallagher and Mackenzie Rosman.
• While reminiscing about their time on set, Biel's costars reminded her of when she crashed her parents' car as a novice driver.
• Biel also reflected on the supportive environment on set, which she said helped her learn how to be an actor.

Jessica Biel had a little mishap as a teenage driver on the set of 7th Heaven.

Biel, 43, appeared on the March 30 episode of the 7th Heaven rewatch podcast Catching Up with the Camdens, which is hosted by her TV siblings Beverley Mitchell, David Gallagher and Mackenzie Rosman. On the series, Biel played oldest sister Mary Camden, while Mitchell played Lucy, Gallagher played Simon and Rosman played Ruthie.

On the podcast, the hosts asked Biel if she has any favorite memories or memorable moments that stick out from their “glorious set.” Rosman teased, “Anything that sticks out like the corner of the schoolroom?”

“Oh, she’s talking about the schoolroom situation,” Mitchell said. “Your driving situation."

“Honestly, I was just waiting,” Biel joked. “I was going to say, ‘Oh, yeah. The camaraderie between us all and how we just had such a nice warm place to go to work as kids.’ No. All right, you can hear the real dirt about what happened.”

“I popped the clutch in my parents' Subaru when I had my learner's permit, not my real license,” she remembered. “And I flew backwards and reversed into Mackenzie's school trailer and busted it off its supports. Broke the computer.”

Rosman didn’t remember the computer damage, but Biel said, “The computer got smashed, my parents’ car got smashed and I almost hit my brother.”

“I just remember you came screaming into the studio, because we were shooting, and you were just so shook up. And I was like, ‘What happened?' ” Mitchell remembered. She added in Biel’s defense that it was raining.

“Let's not pretend that we all haven't had really terrible driving mishaps,” Rosman said. Mitchell said, “I don’t know how to work a clutch,” so she was impressed that Biel even tried.

Later in the episode, the actors reflected on other parts of their experience on set, and Biel said that since the show was one of her first jobs, it taught her how to work in her chosen career. “What I remember more than anything is this was live training on how to be an actor and how to work with the camera, how to deal with lighting,” she said.

“It was such a warm, loving environment that I think I really had that opportunity to mess up,” she continued. “Maybe let's do it this way next time, or whatever the advice was. But I was never meant to feel stupid or like I didn't know what I was doing. It was super duper supportive.”

Still, the siblings joked there were some scenes that were “rougher than others,” including the “epic dinner sequences” and filming in the church. “It was so sweaty and stale in there,” Rosman said, and Biel added that after filming for “many hours,” her “butt was so sore.” They also disliked their church outfits.

“As a teenager, I remember being like, this is awful,” Biel said.

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7th Heaven ran for 11 seasons from 1996 to 2007. 10 of those seasons aired on The WB, making it the network’s longest-running series; the last aired on The CW. The series also starred Barry Watson as eldest brother Matt and Catherine Hicks and Stephen Collins as parents Annie and Eric Camden. In 2014, Collins admitted to sexually abusing underage girls between 1973 and 1994 in a statement to PEOPLE.

Rosman said in a 2024 episode of Catching Up with the Camdens, “As we rewatch these episodes, it would be impossible not to talk about Stephen because he was such a big part of the show and our lives, but we want to be clear that we did not have any inappropriate experiences with Stephen." Mitchell added that they do not “excuse or condone”his behavior.