ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Amanda Seyfried's career has transformed in the last decade. Twenty years ago, she got famous playing bubbly roles in movies like "Mamma Mia!" and "Mean Girls." Now, she's known for showing serious acting chops in projects like "The Dropout," where she played disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and won an Emmy. Her new show is an eight-part series for Peacock called "Long Bright River." Seyfried plays a cop and a single mom investigating a string of murders in the rough Philadelphia neighborhood where the character grew up.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "LONG BRIGHT RIVER")
AMANDA SEYFRIED: (As Mickey) Three bodies discovered in four days, similar demographics on the victims, and one of them might have been murdered. If there's a bad batch of something out there, then these girls need to know what it is. If there isn't, that they need to know to watch their backs.
SHAPIRO: Amanda Seyfried, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
SEYFRIED: Thanks.
SHAPIRO: You're an executive producer...
SEYFRIED: First time.
SHAPIRO: Is it? I can't believe it's your first time. Honestly...
SEYFRIED: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: ...Given the number of major projects you've done, I'm a little embarrassed that it's taken us this long to have you on the show.
SEYFRIED: No, I'm - no, it's - listen, everything in its right time.
SHAPIRO: You were building up your whole career for this - this moment.
SEYFRIED: Yes.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
SEYFRIED: Yes. Exactly.
SHAPIRO: You're an executive producer as well as a star of this show. Why did you want to take it on?
SEYFRIED: I wanted to be a cop.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter) Really?
SEYFRIED: Yep. I wanted to put that belt on. I wanted to put the uniform on. I wanted to portray a cop. This - like, my whole career...
SHAPIRO: Lifelong dream, or woke up...
SEYFRIED: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: ...One morning recently and decided? Like...
SEYFRIED: I think it's been a lifelong dream. And it was one of those really impossible goals for me because I was the ingenue for a long time, and I just never saw myself as someone who could even pretend to have authority. So once I started playing roles - like, I played a lawyer once - it almost felt like a joke. You know, it almost felt like if I couldn't believe it, how is anyone else going to believe it? And this was finally a point in my career in which I felt that I was ready to tackle this - my own internal struggle - with authority and how I feel about myself. So I was like, this is a cop who's my age, has a kid and lives in a place that - very close to where I grew up, so it felt...
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
SEYFRIED: ...Kind of natural.
SHAPIRO: It's set in this rough Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington, where your character grew up, and you grew up just over an hour's drive away from there, in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Did you have a sense of what this place was like before you started working on the project?
SEYFRIED: I knew Philly. I know Philly quite well. I know certain parts of Philly. It was a cultural hot spot for me. And having grown up - like, that was the closest big city so that we just - we would visit for culture. But I never had heard of Kensington until - I mean, I must have been well into my 20s when Kensington was - it was known as the hotspot for the opioid epidemic.
SHAPIRO: Right.
SEYFRIED: And I think, like most people, I only understood it for one thing. And that's part of the reason why I think Liz Moore's book, "Long Bright River," did so well is because she wrote about an honest account and a new perspective on a community that is so marginalized and so feared and avoided because of the suffering, the addiction on the streets, the unhoused people, the sex workers, and not as a community that's actually quite resilient and a community of people who protect each other and kind of move like a well-oiled machine in some ways because they do look after each other. And so...
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
SEYFRIED: ...I think it was just - opened people's eyes to all these neighborhoods that we don't want to set foot in.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "LONG BRIGHT RIVER")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) How could somebody choose to live like that?
SEYFRIED: (As Mickey) Like what?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) This neighborhood used to be normal, man. We used to play baseball here with our kids. Sure, it was rough and tumble, but nothing like this.
SEYFRIED: (As Mickey) Yeah, well, it's got its good parts, its bad parts, like any neighborhood.
SHAPIRO: You know, your character is often the only woman in a room full of men, and the same could be said of Elizabeth Holmes, who you played a few years ago. Is there something that you especially connect with in that kind of a role?
SEYFRIED: I think I'm always trying to evolve quickly through the people I play because I'm very well aware of the fact that I'm a people pleaser to a fault, and it gets in the way of my priorities. And it can make people in my life who are a priority feel less like a priority because I'm so anxious and aware of what I perceive as comfort for other people. And these two women, specifically Mickey, who's based on so many real people, and Elizabeth Holmes, who is a real person, they didn't waste their time trying to make other people comfortable. They just did what they needed to do when they needed to do it. And the more I play these people, the more aware I am of my failings, and I give myself grace, too.
SHAPIRO: But it's so interesting to me to hear that these two characters, who are struggling with so many problems and have so much adversity and have so many challenges, are people who you, Amanda Seyfried, look up to in a way and...
SEYFRIED: Absolutely.
SHAPIRO: ...Aspire to be more like in a way.
SEYFRIED: Well, also, when you're acting, when you're portraying somebody, a way to honor the work at hand and to make it really count is to empathize as much as humanly possible. Of course, we all have our opinions about Elizabeth Holmes. But she's a human being, and she's not all bad. She's a three-dimensional person, and we create stories to do that, to create some kind of space for these people to exist as three-dimensional people. And even though we're trying to enhance the situation for television, the point is to still get to know this person in a different way.
SHAPIRO: So from where I sit, it looks to me like you have passed the point in your career where people say with surprise, wow, she can really do anything. Now, it's more like, yeah, we know she can do drama and comedy and musicals, and she's good at all of it. And so now that you have cleared that hurdle - or maybe you don't feel like you've cleared that hurdle, I'm not sure. But you've played the cop. You've checked that box. Like, if all of these paths are open to you, which paths look the most appealing next?
SEYFRIED: The ones that couldn't be more different than the last character. But I do feel the respect in my industry, and it's wonderful. I don't feel like I have anything to prove. I didn't take on roles in my 30s to prove anything, but in my 20s, that's all I did.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter) Yeah.
SEYFRIED: So I feel like it's been a good, you know, almost 10 years where I've had more fun and had - some years, I would have more opportunities than others, depending on, you know, what hits and what doesn't. It's all a crapshoot. But I always stayed true to why I made these choices. You know when something's unique.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
SEYFRIED: And I don't need to prove anything. I just want to do something different. I just don't want to be bored.
SHAPIRO: Well, Amanda Seyfried, it has been such a pleasure talking to you today.
SEYFRIED: Thanks.
SHAPIRO: Thank you very much.
SEYFRIED: Thank you. You're so gentle, and I love your voice. And I love this show.
SHAPIRO: Oh, thank you.
SEYFRIED: So thanks for everything.
SHAPIRO: Well, the feeling is mutual.
She's executive producer and star of the new eight-part series "Long Bright River" on Peacock.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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