Villainous bully Joanna "J.J." Clark
Joanna "J.J." Clark (Odette Annable) is the (redeemed) main villainess from the 2010 film, You Again.
Backstory[]
The beginning of the film shows the backstory of Joanna Clark, who went by J.J. in high school. In 2002, J.J. was an "alpha female" mean girl at Ridgecrest High School, and her main target of her bullying was Marni Olsen (the film's main protagonist). The scenes show J.J. continuously tormenting Marni, which included an incident during the school's important basketball game, where J.J. pushed Marni (who was the team's mascot) into her ball player brother, Will, which cost them the game. Joanna's backstory also revealed that during her college years, she was engaged to her then-fiancee, Tim, only for Joanna to leave him at the altar.
Events[]
In the time that passed, Joanna began dating Will Olsen and they were engaged to be married entering the events of the film. Marni was phoned by her and Will's mother, Gail, about Will's upcoming wedding to Joanna, and was horrified to learn that Joanna was J.J., the woman who tormented her in high school. When the two meet for the first time in eight years, Joanna pretends not to know Marni and claimed that it was nice to finally meet her for the first time ever; attempting to hide her villainous past in high school. During dinner at the Olsen household, Joanna revealed that she lost both of her parents after high school, and she had been spending time doing charity work; leaving the rest of Marni's family charmed by Joanna.
Marni makes attempts to expose Joanna and get an apology from her, including one attempt while she was driving with Joanna and Will. Joanna later responds by turning on Will's radio, with both of them singing along to Queen's classic song, We Are the Champions; the very song Joanna used to torment Marni in high school. As Marni cringes, she noticed Joanna's evil smirk in the mirror, the first sign that Joanna really did remember Marni. Later in the film, Joanna is confronted by Marni, who demanded an apology from her in exchange for her silence regarding her true colors. Not only does Joanna give an insincere apology, she made a threat of her own to Marni.
After meeting Tim (Joanna's ex-fiancee; though Joanna told Will that they "only dated"), Marni decided to invite Tim to the rehearsal dinner as part of her plan to expose Joanna. After Tim revealed his past as Joanna's fiancee, a video from Ridgefield High's time capsule was played, with Joanna expressing shock over its recovery (which was made by Marni). The video showed Joanna's true evil personality, with Joanna referring to high school as a prison, with herself as the warden. She boasts about her bullying while tormenting Marni, and the video also showed Joanna pushing Marni during the aforementioned game, at which point Will shut down the video before walking out angered over what he watched.
Marni later approached Joanna and confronted her, with Joanna stating that she wanted to start over and blasting Marni for bringing up the past, with Marni walking away convinced that Joanna hadn't changed. The two women engaged in a fight that involved throwing plates and food at each other, only for Will to enter and lambast both of them for their behavior. Will also said to Joanna that her past didn't matter to him, but he was upset at her for lying to him; after which Will called off the wedding.
Redemption[]
Later that night, Marni wakes up to sounds in her kitchen, and finds Joanna in her wedding dress--crying and gorging on junk food. After being calmed down by Marni, Joanna finally expressed sincere remorse over how cruelly she treated Marni, and revealed her true reason for pretending not to know her. She stated that following her parents' death, she wanted to reinvent herself as a better person; one that her parents would be proud of. Joanna pretending not to remember Marni was part of that, because she spent so much time distancing herself from her past as a cruel bully, and she didn't know how to apologize to her. Joanna apologized twice to Marni, who responded by forgiving Joanna and promising to get her and Will back together.
Will and Joanna patched things up in the film's climax, which saw them fall through the loose floorboards of the family's treehouse. Though they were patched up and bandaged due to their broken bones, Joanna and Will ended up married in a makeshift wedding put together by Marni by the film's end.
Trivia[]
- Odette Annable was credited under her pre-married birth name, Odette Yustman, in the film.
- Odette Annable later played recurring villainess Reign on Supergirl.