[TV INTERVIEW] LONG BRIGHT RIVER – Amanda Seyfried Interview

What really fascinated me watching this was something that I think we can all relate to and that is the element of trust—is that what happens in our lives that we go kind of go into default about who we trust and who we don’t trust, and having experienced this character for these eight episodes, what insight has it given you about who do you let into your life and who you can trust and who you still have to temporarily pause with?

Amanda: I think it’s funny because I definitely—I didn’t grow up with the same trauma that Mickey, the character, did. And I understand trauma because of just being fascinated by psychology in general and the fact that, you know, there’s a lot of books out there that teach you about any level of trauma that you experience. Like The Body Keeps the Score, which is, of course, like just it was so informative. I think I, you know—it’s funny, Mickey doesn’t trust anybody, and I trust everybody, and we both do that to a fault, which is partly what attracts me to characters because, you know, they have qualities that are just so different than me. But I think we can all relate to trust as this innate thing that we carry around in our bodies and that are—it’s so sensitive when we’re younger, and it really sets the tone for how we move around the rest of our lives, and it’s I think something that we all can connect about. And it’s also like really important to ask ourselves these questions about do you trust anybody? Who do you trust and why? And do you trust yourself? It’s like an exercise, you know, in reflecting on maybe how you walk through life. I don’t know. Did that answer it?

• So, I’m just wondering what are some of the elements of your own parenting that you’ve included in your character?

Amanda: I think in terms of what I brought to the role is my own mom guilt, and I think once you’re a parent that you have a deeper insight as to what parenting is and the extra—and the added priority or it becomes even a bigger priority than anything in life. And I think that I’m attracted to roles that are, you know, of mothers because the struggle is real. It’s like a huge piece of you, you know, going forward in your life when you have kids, and it changes everything. It changes ever choice you make. It changes the things that you end up loving to do. It changes your hobbies and, you know, your travels. And I think I just I love playing a woman who’s struggling because we always are, it’s on some level, and trying to balance all that priority with her, her job, because she’s also—her job is to protect civilians. Like more people—her responsibility is to not just her so but also to the community. So thought that was interesting. I don’t know. Did I answer it? I don’t know.

• Well, you know, she tells him about history, about music. You know, so you do that with your children as well?

Amanda: Oh, I do. I really like to impart my own passions, but I also—and I’m guilty of this now, I realize, and I don’t know if it’s a good or a bad thing, but coming to talk my kids into certain things to see if it sticks. And I was never—I never really danced, but my daughter right now is taking ballet, and I love that she loves it, and because it’s something that I’m so passionate about watching. I love the ballet. And she’s dancing, and she’s dancing beautifully, and she dances at home to the Nutcracker. She’s just obsessed. So it is interesting how much power we have over our kids’ hobbies. And I have to be sensitive about what it is that I want them to and what they want to do. And I obviously have to honor their wishes. But when they collide, it’s amazing. In the show, it’s a little off-putting, and it’s supposed to be off-putting that she’s really kind of forcing the orchestral music and the symphonies down his throat because that’s how she feels like she’s connecting to him. I wouldn’t necessarily do it in the that Mickey does, but she’s got her failings like we all do.

• You mentioned already just earlier that you like playing struggling women. When I started watching the show, what actually spoke to me is we’re living right now in a world that is so quick at dehumanizing people and actually your show does the opposite. You humanize people, even people—you know, women particularly, but also men. You know, people that maybe like live in tents and all these things, and your character also has so much compassion and empathy. Would you mind addressing was that an important element for you to bring to the world of the how?

Amanda: Yeah, I think the reason that the book was so popular was that it gave an entirely different perspective on a community that people think that they know in on very specific way within regards to the opioid epidemic and the unhoused community and the sex workers. And we look at it that way because that’s what the news has told us. That’s how we’ve learned to relate to these places, and Liz Moore just turns the camera around and in a way that, again, like humanizes the community. And so it was a giant element. I mean, yes, I took the role because I wanted to play a cop in Kensington, sure. But I think when you go deeper and you look at the entire project, it is—the reason we made it is because it does breed empathy and compassion, and it does offer a new perspective that we need or we’re not going to know. I mean, we can’t step into other people’s shoes emotionally unless we’re educated on, you know, and reminded that people are three dimensional. And that also we—are only one or two choices away from being in Kensington and then struggling with substance use disorder and being unhoused. Like it doesn’t take much. And in this show, we make it very clear that it was only about a choice that was made a long time ago, and I think it’s really important to remind us all that we aren’t that different, period. We really aren’t. And there are forces in the world that are constantly trying to—egos in the world that are constantly trying to make us feel other than and fear other people, and like so that’s why. You know, that’s why a story like this is so attractive because it, yeah, it humanizes. It’s a very powerful part of the puzzle for me. Like why make anything if it’s not going to change someone’s mind for the better or at least teach them about the capacity of love. Their own capacity to be of service and we have that in spades, and it all comes from Liz Moore and Nikki Toscano, like the showrunner who just like translated it all. It’s important.

• I was just looking at how much your professional life has been really blooming and exploding in the last few years. You have so many projects either in progress now or in post-production or in preproduction, and I was wondering how much having now kids influences your choice of roles where you go to, you know, whether it takes you away from home, how do you, you know, family life and having kids with your—and with the passion for acting that, you know, that you have and the choice of roles?

Amanda: Yeah, well, because that’s the thing, I’m never going to stop working, hopefully. I mean, hopefully, but I’m never going to stop wanting to work, and my kids see how fulfilling it is, and they appreciate it in the only way they can at their age, four and eight. And it’s just I am pickier. But I think that it kind of comes with age, too, even without kids. You know what it takes. You know the emotional and physical toll these shows and these movies take, and you choose them for that. But you also know that you can do less of them. And you want to give all of yourself to each one. And so you just have to pick and choose wisely. And I mean it’s all about making sure that I get to be home. I don’t tend to go out of the country anymore, at least right at the age that the kids are at. It’s not a great time to go away. I’ve never gone longer than five days. That’s a rule. I obviously have to travel for work, but it’s always, you know, like they are the priority. And they come a lot. Like we did go to Budapest this last summer. I took the dog, the whole family. We all went because it was during the—and just we has to fit in with their school schedule. It has to fit in with my emotional capacity. And I always have to be able to eat with them, whether I’m not in the same city as them. And also, you know, I do a lot of work to make sure that they know I’m thinking about them. And there’s like my husband and I started doing notes every day that we’re gone. and it’s like something they look forward to. But you got to like,—it’s always in the form—and there’s a lot of mom guilt. There’s a lot of guilt in general, parent guilt. But they’re good. They’re really good. And you have to check in with them all the time. It doesn’t end, and it changes every couple of months. They develop a new fear or a new excitement or a new—I don’t know, hobby. And so every time I go away, it’s a new project and it’s a new developmental point in their lives. And so you got to just move with it. They are my priority. But again, I love working too.

• Right. Yeah. What did you mean by saying your husband and you start to make notes? Did you say notes? Writing?

Amanda: Yes, well, so we make little notes in these little envelopes. I have a lot of stationery from over the years. And so we write because my daughter’s reading now, so she can read it to my son. So what I started doing is writing little notes about what I’m doing that day with people that they maybe they know so they can relate to what I’m doing and then saying, I hope you had a great day. I know today it was pottery and blah, blah, blah. And I’ll say, I love you, I miss you, I’m pulling the string. We pull strings. You know, like I’m pulling the string. Can you feel the string? It’s the invisible thread from that book, which is so important. And then I write a little joke, and then I wrote the answer upside down. It’s like a silly joke. Like why did the girl throw butter out the window? She wanted to see butterfly. It’s like interactive things so they can hold something tangible every day that we’re gone, and then we come back and it’s like easy and fun.

• So we talked about family raising you, but there’s also the neighborhood that raises you. And I don’t know a lot about Kensington, but it’s a big character as well. So can you talk also a little bit maybe how you were raised by your neighborhood? You know, how that’s important as well, not only, you know, what families you are born into.

Amanda: I think the wonderful thing about neighborhoods is that they tend to really take care of each other, specifically Kensington. But my neighborhood growing up, I was—my dad still lives in that house. We grew up near this campus of Muhlenberg College in Allentown, and there was a campus shop, and there was just little landmarks around, and I felt like it was one of those neighborhoods where I could just go bike riding with my friends all day until dark and then come home for dinner. And I think that really plays a part in how I was raised to feel like I’m in some way protected, whether in certain situations. I just I like I believe the best. I feel like I look at the best parts of situations as opposed to look for the danger. And I think that has a lot to do with just being able to ride around and not feel like there was a, you know, a clock ticking or somebody coming after me. And I just I feel like there’s a certain reason this neighborhood is so beautiful to, you know, have a view into is because Kensington, as much as its been marginalized and, you know, it’s feared and avoided, it’s also—and you know, it’s the epicenter. They consider the epicenter of the opioid epidemic. It’s also very resilient and the people within the community, whether they’re unhoused or not, or volunteers, or of service to each other, they’re all kind of—there’s a connection there. There’s a bond and a protection there. And that’s the thing about neighborhoods is like you live in the same place, you know what it’s like, you speak the same language, and it kind of works with, you know, despite everybody trying to clean it up. You can’t really take the essence out of a neighborhood. And I feel grateful that I grew up where I grew up because I can go back, and it’s different. People don’t—the same people don’t live there anymore. But I know each house, and I have memories in each house, and I have memories on each block, and they’re all positive.

• The show is set in a neighborhood hard hit by the opioid crisis and delves into the destruction of addiction. Can you talk about any research you did into this area? What surprised you most about what you discovered, and then would you make a good cop?

Amanda: Yeah. I think I would just talk too much on every traffic stop. I would just try to like really—yeah, it’s I’m not suited to be a cop, which is, again, like another thing, totally wanted to try it out and be this person, and I had all the resources. But yeah, I wouldn’t be a cop. Well, I, like most, you know, 99 percent of people, I know and close to people who have struggled with substance use issues, and it’s gone both ways. And so and I grew up with—I grew up in it, just like Mickey, not the same, but—not the same level of devastation. But, you know, it’s tricky and scary. And in some way, it kind of informed my lack of a desire to ever try a drug except pot because I guess that’s just you got to do it. You got to do it once. But I think that was another like draw for me for this show because I want to talk about this stuff as much as possible. And there are a lot of shows out there. I mean I watched both Painkiller and Dopesick and both about the Sackler family. Don’t know how they both got made, but they did, and they were both equally wonderful and informative, but this is a different—this is a completely different side of the opioid epidemic. It’s completely a different set of characters, people that are way more involved in the day to day, you know, and being unhouses sex workers trying to just get by for their next fix. You know, the real the struggle. It’s a completely different perspective, and I needed to see that, and people need to see that. People need to see how the epidemic has affected people, and how it continues to affect people and that it’s not necessarily a choice anymore. And as dark as it is, there’s like a—there’s a lot of light in that community. There’s like a lot of art in that community. There’s just like there’s a beautiful people doing incredible work.  And people who have recovered and still, you know, walk every day and make sure that their friends are doing okay. It’s incredible. It has taught me so much about the power of one. And I know it feels there’s like so much going on, of course. Sometimes we just feel helpless. But it really it was a learning experience for me, which most jobs are, but I was able to relate to my own experiences with addiction, and it opened my eyes to like how I could maybe look at it differently. Yeah.

• How does costume help build your character? Was there a specific accessory or outfit that made you connect the most with her?

Amanda: My belt. I put on the uniform, it was a costume to me, but I put on the cop uniform, which I wear—I don’t know, like probably 65 percent of the time in the show. And with that belt, it’s heavy. They took a lot of the stuff out. I’m obviously not wearing everything a cop would wear or my hips would—I don’t have hips, but like I would have had like metal hips at this point, but it was really heavy still. And it made me walk differently, and so do the shoes, and a gait, a different gait for a character—playing a character is always really grounding, and effortless when the gait is—when the belt is walking for you. That was really powerful, yeah. And then always having my hair out of the way. So I never had to worry about continuity. I’d just be present. Like what a gift because it’s usually not like that. You usually have like hair, you know all over the place, and it’s like blowing and you like do—I always do threes, and I always do threes to make sure I don’t have to worry about continuity because all I want to do is be present, but it’s sometimes impossible, so, yeah.

1. There’s a specific purpose for the ponytail?

Amanda: Yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it can’t get in the way. It’s going to—you know, if you get into some kind of a physical altercation with somebody because you never know how people are going to behave, you have to make sure that you—there’s nothing for someone to grab or nothing to get stuck in anything. It’s all very practical. The cop uniform is very practical, and the boots are very practical and light, and you can run in them, the sneakers and boots. That uniform, it’s just like Daniel Day-Lewis says, it’s always going to be true. Yeah, it does a lot.

1. I kind of want to follow up a little bit about being a police officer because for so long in Hollywood, I mean, obviously, it was a male-dominated profession. And then we started to see in television and film more women officers being portrayed. But this was one of the first times where I actually felt the vulnerability of a character. I don’t know if it was a size difference or something because I honestly felt you were in—there was so much intimidation around you. What was your mindset or even the conversations you may have had with female officers and detectives about being in the face of danger that when you have somebody with a gun in front of you, what type of adrenaline your body goes through?

Amanda: Yeah, it’s funny. Yeah, I’m friends with two female officers, and they are as slight as I am—maybe just a tiny, tiny bit, you know, stronger. But it was very intentional that Mickey, even in the book that Mickey is slight and doesn’t work too hard at being strong. It’s more about the way she relates to people emotionally and practically but not physically. And also because she’s not great at her job. But I think the intimidation comes from A) the uniform and B) the lack of care about what people think of you. I think that’s that kind of—God, what’s the word? That kind of like attitude, that like don’t give a shit attitude is so powerful, so empowering. It was empowering to play, and it’s just so the opposite of me. And I think that’s how I was able to kind of get into that, be believable because my big fear was that I was not going to be believable as a cop. And so therefore there were never any cop roles offered to me until this because it didn’t—she needed to be a human being who also happens to be a cop. And when I took the power out of that, like when I stopped being intimidated by her uniform, I realized that like, well, it’s they’re all human beings wearing uniforms like doing their job, hopefully, well, giving, caring about the community, the civilians that they’re surrounded by every day. But I just I realized that these two women—and they have kids, too, single mothers just like Mickey—these two women just like knew what was right and knew how to talk to people and knew that the law, whether it be ridiculous or not at times depending on what it is, is on their side, and they’re not going to hurt anybody unless—but they’re going to protect themselves. And they just kind of—they have this—they’re like a compass. I don’t know. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s just meeting them, I was like, I know what I’m here to do, and I can stay focused and present on that, and that’s how they seem to live their lives. They also have fun. They’re also people. They’re human beings. I see cops—when I was a kid, I would see cops be (makes face) in awe of them and scared of them. And if someone was—if a cop was not very nice to me at a traffic stop or some kind of speed stop or whatever, you know, I was terrified. But I realize now it’s just like, again, just like the unhoused people, like when you walk past somebody who’s asking for money, it’s just like we’re all human beings. We literally are connected in 8,000 ways. I digress.

1. So you mentioned Nikki already in passing, but can we talk a little bit more about Nikki. You know, for you, what is it about her that she’s the creative, the showrunner, the boss on this show and taking the lead? Were you very familiar with her before? How important is it for you that she is actually a woman telling this story? Anything you want to say, hopefully good, about Nikki?

Amanda: I hadn’t met her before but I think—God, I don’t want to say this. There’s a sensitivity to the writing on the show. There’s a specificity to the writing on the show. There’s a nuance to the way the characters interact, and I have a weird suspicion that it’s because Nikki was the showrunner, Nikki’s also a director. Obviously, she directed episode six, and it was amazing because she’s been there the whole time every day. She’s the encyclopedia of the show. Liz was there most times, but Nikki is the encyclopedia of every episode, of every action, of every conversation, of every crazy twist. If I got confused between flashbacks and present day, I would go straight to Nikki, and she would know exactly what I was talking about, and be very efficient in her response, and I would get all the information. It was insane. The whole show is female directors, written by a woman, led by a—like it’s very much a woman-led show. I wish that was more—I wish it was less rare. But you can feel the show, even the pilot, it was so specific, the writing and the way these characters were speaking to each other was so sensitive but clear and driven by something. And I don’t know. I don’t know. I hate to say—I hate to, you know, talk about sex but, yeah, it’s so Nikki, and I really respond to that, and I feel the same about like (inaudible). It’s a different genre, for sure, but I was thinking a lot about Liz when I was reading this, and like she captures things in a very specific way, but so does Nikki. And it’s just a very specific language and voice, and it was really easy for me to feel grounded. It was just it really helped in a world that I do not, you know, I did not inhabit, in a place that I don’t know very well. I didn’t. I felt like I knew it. I felt like I knew it. I felt like I grew up in it, and I didn’t. You know, I didn’t know Kensington growing up. I only knew Philly as a whole and, you know, south Philly.

1. You already spoke earlier about how this role was personal, the story is personally to you. In which way was it personal to Nikki? Did she have like experiences with you know that kind of world, the crisis or anything that connected her to the story.

Amanda: Yeah, I think all three of us have personal connections to addiction. Sadly but, you know, common and we all connected to that and pulled from that, and I think that’s another reason it’s so grounded because it’s not easy to be reminded every day about the people that were losing the people who OD, the amount of people who OD. It’s not easy to portray cops who don’t care. It’s not easy like some of the cops in this show. (00:48:12) And Patch Darragh, I mean, he’s incredible. It’s not easy to tell the story, but it’s important to tell the story, and the only way it makes sense to tell the story is to keep it as realistic as possible, and the only way to keep it as realistic as possible is for us to kind of know in our bones the cost of this addiction and the suffering of it.

1. Okay. Last question. Were there any particular moments in this script that challenged your perception of right and wrong, and how did you navigate those moments as an actor to stay true to Mickey’s character?

Amanda: Challenged Going through all eight episodes in my brain. I’m trying to remember like the show. I don’t know—that we did a lot of stalking of my ex-monster. And it always—it’s a very strange feeling, and I know that it’s completely illegal but, like—because he ended up—stalking is just really terrible. But there was a reason, but it felt icky even as me when I was playing my character. It felt icky, but it was for a reason because I did think that he was up to something, and he is up to something, and it’s not what I expected. But it’s an interesting thing to follow somebody around. I never want to do that. I think it’s terrifying, too, because you don’t know what you’re going to find, so I would just mind my business. That’s how it feels. Like I just—yeah, I don’t know.

Long Bright River is currently streaming.