Jana Kramer talks about Gaslit by My Husband: The Morgan Metzer Story, the new Lifetime movie she stars in and executive produces.
“Extra’s” Mona Kosar Abdi spoke with Yana as she prepares to say “yes” to Alan Russell.
Jana says she has “about a month” left until she and Alan exchange wedding vows.
She said: “I already have the dress and will be having it altered, hopefully, very soon. It’s going to be a really small wedding so I’m really looking forward to it. He’s a great man. A great father.”
Jana shared that she and friends went to a showroom in New York to try on wedding dresses, and admitted that she felt a bit “blah” at first.
“I was like, ‘What do you guys think? I don’t know,'” she recalled. “But that was more fun because I’d never had the experience of trying things on.”
Kramer has been outspoken about the negative public perception of remarriage. “You shouldn’t feel embarrassed about it,” she said.
Jana continued, “I think the hard part is people only know what’s in the headlines. It doesn’t feel good to hear, ‘Oh, this is her fourth marriage.’ No one knows that I was 19, that’s when I met my abuser. I didn’t know him. We went to Las Vegas. I always say I’ve only been married once, and that was to the father of my children. [Mike Caussin]And, you know, that’s what marriage is. We fought and we tried so hard. I’m not going to call a Las Vegas wedding or a one-week wedding a marriage, because to me, that’s not marriage.”
She reflected, “I guess this is partly about my past. It doesn’t look good on paper, but I don’t blame a girl for fighting for love and getting back on her feet after being abused and cheated on and continuing to believe that there is hope and love and good people out there.”
“I am so grateful and I want people to know that there is hope after such a dark journey,” Jana emphasized.
When asked how she deals with haters, Kramer responded, “I just have to always remember my truth and my intentions. I think we’re always evolving, so I’m always learning and evolving. And as long as my surroundings are happy and filled with love, I need to shut out the outside noise.”
Jana and her fiancé welcomed their first child, a son, Roman, in November, and she also has two children, Jolie and Jace, with ex-husband Mike Caussin.
“I can’t believe he’s almost six months old. Such a happy, healthy baby boy. Everything is fantastic. We are so grateful,” she said.
A few months after giving birth, Jana returned to set for Gaslighting by My Husband: The Morgan Metzer Story.
She said: “It’s great that everyone has been so accommodating. I’m grateful to my ex-husband and everyone who’s in the same situation, and to my fiancé, because I’m able to say, ‘Okay, how do I make this work for my family?’ I’m like, ‘If I’m going to do this, I’m going to be a better actress with my family,’ so having my daughter in the movie with me was also awesome.”
An elated Jana said she was “proud” of Jolie, adding, “I just loved how confident she was. It was great to see her on her own path and know she’s doing a good job.”
Jana had “age-appropriate conversations” with Jolie, discussing the film’s heavy themes, including domestic violence. “I didn’t tell her everything that happened in the movie, but I was able to let her know, in an age-appropriate way, what’s right and what’s wrong, what a man should never do — what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. So it was a good education opportunity on set,” she said.
Kramer also spoke about the story’s similarities to her own experience with domestic violence, her desire to give a voice to victims, and how one scene in particular shocked her while filming.
She commented, “Though it was Morgan Metzer’s story, it was very similar to my own history of domestic violence. What I realized was that this is not just Morgan’s story, and it’s not just my story. There are so many women’s stories out there, and I wanted to play this role to give a voice to women who need it most, to help them recognize the warning signs in their own relationships, the gaslighting that can creep in at the slightest doubt and make them question their sanity and reality. I wanted to use the pain of my past to help others.”
For the film, Kramer had to film an assault scene, which she found difficult to cope with at first. She said: “I asked my therapist during one scene, ‘I don’t know how I should behave in this scene. Will it trigger me again? Will I want to feel that again?’ And she basically said, ‘You’re not doing this for yourself. You’re doing it for the women who need to see this.'”
The scene remained shocking for Jana, as she noted, “I had to yell cut on set, because I had a full-blown panic attack. My body remembers it. I was scared. I didn’t want to. But I had to remind myself what was real and why I was telling this story.”
“Gaslit by My Husband” airs Sunday, June 9 on Lifetime.
