transcript

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[00:18] This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross. My guest is actor and writer Amanda Peet. She first became known for her roles in the 2000s in films like The Whole Nine Yards, Igby Goes Down, Syriana and the Nancy Meyers film Something's Gotta Give, always bringing intelligence and wit to her performances. She also co-starred on television in shows like Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the HBO series Togetherness, the recent reboot of Fatal Attraction, and now the Apple TV series, Your Friends & Neighbors, which recently started its second season. The show is about Coop, played by Jon Hamm, a hedge fund manager who was pushed out and now makes his money by stealing from his neighbors in a rich suburb of Manhattan. Amanda Peet plays Mel, his ex-wife, a former therapist who's struggling with aging, the loss of her career, and her deteriorating relationship with her teenage kids. Peet also stars in the new film, Fantasy Life, which won the Audience Award at the South by Southwest Film Festival. Amanda Peet won the Special Jury Prize for Acting. She plays a formerly successful New York actress who starts a relationship with the 20-something former paralegal who's babysitting her children. Amanda Peet is also a great writer. She was co-creator and showrunner of the Netflix series, The Chair, starring Sandra Oh, and she recently wrote an essay in The New Yorker about how she was diagnosed with breast cancer at the same time both of her parents were dying. They were divorced and living on opposite coasts under home hospice care. Amanda Peet, welcome to Fresh Air.

Speaker 3:
[01:57] Thank you so much, Terry. It's an honor to talk to you.

Speaker 2:
[02:00] It's an honor to talk to you, and I'm glad to hear that you're doing okay. Just so listeners aren't in suspense. Even though you had a second lump that was found, that was benign and your diagnosis turned out to be stage zero.

Speaker 3:
[02:19] I have stage one luminal B, high-risk one lobular breast cancer, or had it, I should say.

Speaker 2:
[02:28] Yes. Most importantly, you are cancer-free now?

Speaker 3:
[02:34] Cancer-free and extremely lucky.

Speaker 2:
[02:37] Congratulations. I'm really happy for you. Thank you. I'm really sorry about your parents.

Speaker 3:
[02:43] Thank you very much.

Speaker 2:
[02:44] So we'll talk about that New Yorker essay and your parents and your breast cancer all coinciding later.

Speaker 3:
[02:53] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[02:53] But I want to start with your work. So I want to play a scene from Fantasy Life. And you play Diane Keaton, an actor who used to have some success, but you haven't worked in a few years and you feel like a has-been. You're so depressed, you're having trouble getting out of bed and participating in life. And in this scene, you're having lunch with your agent to talk about your career. So you speak first.

Speaker 3:
[03:21] I've just, I'm feeling a little dispersed.

Speaker 4:
[03:27] Oh, you mean acting-wise? Yeah. Let's process. Thank you. Sure.

Speaker 3:
[03:34] Um, basically, I feel like nothing's happening. And nothing's gonna happen.

Speaker 4:
[03:43] Well, I mean, can you say more?

Speaker 3:
[03:48] Because I ran into Bob Hemble at the gym the other day, and he didn't even recognize me, Kim.

Speaker 4:
[03:53] How is that possible?

Speaker 5:
[03:54] I won an OBI.

Speaker 4:
[03:57] He is Alzheimer's, Diane.

Speaker 3:
[03:59] What?

Speaker 4:
[03:59] Heartbreaking.

Speaker 3:
[04:01] Oh, God.

Speaker 4:
[04:02] His family's having a hard time. Jesus.

Speaker 3:
[04:06] I'm so sorry. I mean...

Speaker 4:
[04:07] All right. What else? Ah.

Speaker 3:
[04:13] I don't know.

Speaker 4:
[04:13] Listen, it's gonna take a little time, babe. We're reintroducing you to everyone.

Speaker 3:
[04:19] I just thought it would move a little faster.

Speaker 4:
[04:21] No, I know. I still think creating content is a great idea. You know, a podcast or a pilot. It's good to have something.

Speaker 5:
[04:30] I think I just want auditions.

Speaker 4:
[04:31] If I could say, hey, check out this hilarious pilot Diane wrote.

Speaker 3:
[04:38] Am I too old?

Speaker 4:
[04:39] What? Absolutely not.

Speaker 3:
[04:41] I look in the mirror and I just, it doesn't seem right. And yet, I look at other women who did stuff a decade ago, and it doesn't seem right, but I just-

Speaker 4:
[04:52] Here's what's not gonna happen. You're not gonna touch your face. You are gorgeous, Diane. You're a real a** woman. Stunning. Could you just give me one second? Yeah. Yeah, of course. Put them on.

Speaker 2:
[05:11] That's a great scene. I love the suggestion. Wait. You can create content. Podcast.

Speaker 3:
[05:18] Way too close to home.

Speaker 2:
[05:20] Is it?

Speaker 3:
[05:21] Oh my God. I mean, listening to it, it's really just triggering.

Speaker 2:
[05:28] What was the period in your life where you were feeling like, Diane, that you were like over the hill, that you look too old, you weren't getting roles?

Speaker 3:
[05:38] I mean, definitely when togetherness was canceled. At that point, I thought, okay, well, that's that. That's it. But, you know, actors think that a lot. So it just has a new, a whole new level of doom, I think, when you're older and wrinkly.

Speaker 2:
[06:04] You know what kills me about that? There are so many people who are older. It's one of the biggest demographics in the country, considerably older than you are. But if you want to live a life, you're going to be older even if you're not yet. You're what, in your early 50s? I mean, there's so many people of that age. It's a demographic. You can sell your movies to those people. Why would you leave them out? It just makes no sense. Make movies they want to go to.

Speaker 3:
[06:35] Yeah. Which I thought when I read the script was one of those.

Speaker 2:
[06:39] It was, for sure. Yeah. Do you also relate to the whole idea of, does this mean I need face work done?

Speaker 3:
[06:48] I mean, I probably think about getting a facelift or something every other day, if not more. It's on my mind constantly because a lot of my friends have done it, a lot of them haven't, but a lot of them have. I know we were supposed to talk about death later, but I can't seem to just think about a facelift and changing my face. It goes straight to thoughts about death.

Speaker 2:
[07:17] What's the connection?

Speaker 3:
[07:19] I have almost like this superstitious thing that if I were to actually do an elective surgery to look younger, I would immediately get my cancer would come back or I would get Parkinson's. It's almost like recently I was thinking about my dad loved that ancient fable appointment in Samara. Do you know that?

Speaker 2:
[07:45] I don't. I know the title.

Speaker 3:
[07:47] It's a merchant servant in Baghdad and he goes to the market and he sees death and gets spooked and so he runs back to his master and says, I need your horse. I need to run off to Samara because I just saw death and I'm so scared. Later, the merchant goes back to the marketplace and says to death, why did you scare my servant like that? You shouldn't have done that. Death says, no, I didn't mean to scare him. I was just startled because I have an appointment with him tonight in Samara.

Speaker 2:
[08:18] Oh.

Speaker 3:
[08:20] Sorry, that was a really long-winded answer to your facelift question.

Speaker 2:
[08:23] No, no, no, but that's a good answer.

Speaker 3:
[08:25] Something like that. Even if it's just in a spiritual way, not a literal way, that you would get ill from having somehow lacked gratitude for having health at this point.

Speaker 2:
[08:39] Yeah, no, I understand. Tell me what you think of this. Here's my fear with actors who have face work done. Your face is such an important tool and you have such really nuanced facial expressions in your acting. You can really see that in Fantasy Life, your new movie. You have limited movement once you've had facial surgery because your skin is pulled so tight.

Speaker 3:
[09:05] Well, but let me tell you this. We had a little premiere for Fantasy Life and afterwards, there was a little party and as I was leaving, an older, quite beautiful woman stood up from across the room and yelled, Amanda. She made a beeline for me and sort of opened her arms and said, I love, and I thought she was going to say, your performance, because we were at the premiere party and instead she said, I love your wrinkles.

Speaker 2:
[09:36] Oh.

Speaker 3:
[09:40] And I found that to be really depressing, actually. Like in the car going back to the hotel, I was like, wow, is it getting to the point where not taking away my wrinkles is as distracting as if I got a weird pull or lift or whatever.

Speaker 2:
[10:01] Can I reinterpret that for you?

Speaker 3:
[10:03] Okay, please do.

Speaker 2:
[10:04] I love the idea that you haven't had a facelift. I love the idea that you've kept your face, that you look like somebody who hasn't had work done. So where are you now just asking over and over what to do?

Speaker 3:
[10:19] I just don't know where the line is because, you know, I get facials and I've, you know, I dye my hair, I go to the gym. I guess that's not the same, but I, you know, I do other things. So it's really, it just exists on a continuum. I hate a continuum because it's so messy. And I want to just be able to be purist because it seems like it would be much more relaxing. But that's sort of my rant.

Speaker 2:
[10:47] In terms of relating to the character that you play in Fantasy Life, do you relate to the Depression?

Speaker 3:
[10:56] Yeah, I do. I sometimes don't know what to call it, but I'm no stranger to Depression and no stranger to anxiety. And I'm the daughter of a shrink. So these notions and labels have been batted around in my head and in my household all my life. And I really loved the part of Fantasy Life that dealt with mental illness but sort of more average, expectable mental illness. Like usually we see, as Matthew Shearer always points out, like the Joker with all his pills or Girl Interrupted or people who are stark raving mad. But in this movie, these are just regular folks who sometimes get taken down. And I found that to be really beautiful and sort of rare. So that also spoke to me separately from the fact that she feels she's a husband, which also spoke to me.

Speaker 2:
[11:52] Yeah, and Matthew Shearer wrote, directed, and stars with you in the film. He's the person who becomes the babysitter, the manny for your three kids. Let me move on to Your Friends & Neighbors, which is the Apple TV series that you star in with Jon Hamm. You play a divorced couple, and he, as I mentioned earlier, was a hedge fund manager but was pushed out. So he's basically stealing from wealthy neighbors who he feels like, they have enough stuff, they won't miss this, they might not even notice that it's gone, and you're the mother of two children. You still really care about each other, but you've had a partner, he's had another partner, things aren't really working out great on that end. So in this scene, you're on the steps of the family house that you used to share before you got divorced. Your daughter is a senior in high school who's gotten into Princeton, but she doesn't want to go, and you think like, that's crazy, you got into Princeton and you're not going to go, you have to go. So you've gotten her like readmitted to Princeton after she rejected it. And so she's really angry with you and decides to move out, and move in with her father, the John Hamm character. So here is your character and John Hamm's character, talking about your daughter who's just moved in with him.

Speaker 3:
[13:14] How's your new roommate?

Speaker 6:
[13:17] I'll let you know when she starts talking to me.

Speaker 2:
[13:21] How are you?

Speaker 5:
[13:23] You know, I've been better.

Speaker 3:
[13:25] You know why she came to you, right?

Speaker 6:
[13:28] Because I'm her father.

Speaker 3:
[13:30] Because you're the vacation parent, the fun one.

Speaker 6:
[13:34] Okay. Are you mad because she's pissed at you or because she came to me? Seriously?

Speaker 3:
[13:38] You were always at work.

Speaker 5:
[13:39] She was the one who had to hold the line.

Speaker 3:
[13:41] You maybe emerged for a couple of hours on weekends, but all bets were off. You never said no to her.

Speaker 6:
[13:49] She was always so good.

Speaker 3:
[13:51] She was good because I was on it. Brush your teeth, drink your milk, do your homework, be home by 11, get off your screens. You can't leave the house wearing that outfit. Whenever they came to you for permission or something, you'd be like, what did mom say?

Speaker 6:
[14:05] Yeah, because I was backing you up.

Speaker 3:
[14:06] You were passing the buck.

Speaker 6:
[14:08] Oh, please.

Speaker 3:
[14:10] I gave everything I had to those kids and somehow I'm the...

Speaker 6:
[14:14] Well, if the shoe fits. Come on. Girls push back against their mothers. It's the thing. It'll pass.

Speaker 3:
[14:25] I guess you're just thrilled you get her all to yourself.

Speaker 6:
[14:27] Well, it's not the worst. If I'm being honest, my house can be a little lonely. I mean, I lived with you guys for 18 years. It's honestly kind of nice to have her slamming doors and rolling her eyes at me.

Speaker 1:
[14:45] Ain't it?

Speaker 2:
[14:46] The scene from Your Friends & Neighbors, season two, episode three, and Your Friends & Neighbors is streaming on Apple TV. So, you know, we were talking about available roles for women who are middle-aged or older. And in this series, I mean, your character is dealing with perimenopause, anxiety, rage, sexual changes. So I think TV movies are starting to catch up with real life.

Speaker 3:
[15:19] Yeah, I agree. And I'm, I'm, I feel very lucky that Jonathan Chopper, you know, I have a male boss showrunner who's interested in bringing this to the foreground this season. So I was kind of blown away by that.

Speaker 2:
[15:37] So in terms of like relating to your characters, like your children are teenagers now. Are you going through crises with them or they like fight back?

Speaker 3:
[15:47] Oh yeah. Some of those scenes with my adolescent daughter, Isabel, were really way too close to home as well. I think when we shot those scenes about Princeton, Frankie was applying to colleges. So I hope I wasn't as brutal with Frankie as I was with my TV daughter. But I definitely had a lot of anxiety around that and she's my first born. So I definitely put too much pressure on her. But I could really relate to it. I could really relate to Mel's desperation and her, this feeling that there is no other pathway, there's no other algorithm if you're not doing Princeton. It's this or nothing, that kind of absurd attachment to that status stuff, the name.

Speaker 2:
[16:41] And you took a different path than your parents. They weren't overjoyed that you wanted to be an actor.

Speaker 3:
[16:47] No, they were concerned and they didn't want to pay for anything. I wanted to have pictures taken and I wanted to start going out looking for an agent. And they just basically said, like, when you're done with college, you can do what you want, but for now, you have to go to college. So it never occurred to me even to try to go to conservatory, like it just wasn't a part of the conversation.

Speaker 2:
[17:15] I want to get to the really beautiful essay that you wrote in the New Yorker about how you were diagnosed with breast cancer. At the same time, your parents who were divorced, were each in hospice, home hospice, on separate coasts. And the title was My Season of Ativan. I can understand why you were on Ativan. So as I said earlier, it turned out to be treatable with a lumpectomy and radiation even though it's a very dangerous kind of cancer that you have. And so you're cancer-free right now, which is beautiful.

Speaker 3:
[17:49] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[17:50] A lot of people go through the why me scenario. And I'm wondering if you went through a version of how could it possibly be that both your parents were dying in a hospice and before all the tests came back, you thought you might be dying too because it's a very aggressive form of cancer.

Speaker 3:
[18:09] Well, to be honest, I was extremely lucky that I was hormone receptor positive and HER2 negative. So my cancer is luminal B, high-risk 1 cancer, but it's not as aggressive as some other forms of breast cancer. So once I knew that, I knew that my cancer was going to be treatable. I just want to be clear about that. But I didn't really have that why me thing. Maybe it's because I'm Jewish. I'm just sort of always waiting for the other shoe to drop. So in this case, it was three shoes. But it was more just like, I mean, obviously, I had a lot of meltdowns, but I was like, okay, roll our sleeves up, all hands on deck. My sister was incredible. My husband, who's a doctor, my sister's a doctor in Philly actually, and her husband, who's at CHOP in Philly. They were sort of like, we had almost like a team, I felt like, and a team around me, and there were really beautiful things that came out of it. Even my mom's death with my sister, and my mom's caregiver was just like, it's just, there's no way to describe. It was very scary, but it was also very beautiful.

Speaker 2:
[19:37] And your mother was living in a cottage just like, what, 20 feet away from your home, so you could see her very frequently.

Speaker 3:
[19:44] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[19:46] But I was thinking not so much of like, why me, but how is it possible that these two deaths and your cancer could coincide like that?

Speaker 3:
[19:55] Yes. It was crazy. I mean, it was crazy. I think that's why I started writing initially, because I probably needed a way to organize or like, harness all of the feelings, the bewilderment.

Speaker 2:
[20:20] Well, we need to take another break here, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Amanda Peet. She stars on the new movie, Fantasy Life, and she's also one of the stars of the Apple TV series, Your Friends & Neighbors, which recently started its second season. So, we'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air.

Speaker 1:
[20:41] This message comes from NPR sponsor Carvana, making buying a car 100 percent online with real transparent pricing and customizable financing that fits your budget. Browse thousands of cars and get yours delivered. Visit carvana.com today. Delivery fees and terms may apply.

Speaker 7:
[20:59] This week on Up First, the Trump administration and Iran do not have a peace deal. Now the president says the Strait of Hormuz is under a US blockade. What that means for the ceasefire in Iran remains to be seen. And what it means for gas prices? Those will likely continue to climb. Follow the latest developments. We'll have them every morning on Up First. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2:
[21:25] When your father was dying, he flew to New York, but he died like very shortly before you actually arrived at his home. His body was still there, so you got to spend time with his body. And you write that you'd never been that close to a dead body before. And you say, and I'm quoting you, I just stood there in a state of morbid fascination. I had never seen a dead body up close before, let alone someone so familiar to me. Did you feel like he was that your father was still there? Or did it feel like you were seeing the shell of your father, but not your father?

Speaker 3:
[22:04] I don't think it's a static thing. It won't stay in the same place. My perception wouldn't stay. So it was like sometimes I would have overwhelming feelings that I needed to stay with the morgue techs so that they wouldn't hurt him or stop at Starbucks on the way back to the morgue. Two minutes later, I would feel more clinically about it. And it was really interesting, my sister's internal medicine. And it was really interesting because she was very emotional at first. And then when we left the building and we saw the hearse, I felt terrified that they were taking his body and just weird feelings of not wanting to leave him. And she was like, no, that's just his, you know, it's almost like the carcass of a car going to the bailing press or something. Like she was much more able to recognize that we had crossed the threshold, kind of, at that point. I think the real thing, though, is that it just wouldn't stay in one place for me. I don't know if you had that experience, but it was very strange in that way. And my spirituality, my lack of spirituality, you know, it was a struggle to find a comfortable place, obviously.

Speaker 2:
[23:37] Your mother had final stage Parkinson's, and so by the time you were diagnosed with the breast cancer, she was, I wouldn't call it a coma, like she, but she was like semi-conscious, is that fair to say? Unable to move, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[23:55] Yeah, she was unable to move. She could move her arms a little bit and her mouth, but she couldn't really speak. So I don't know if I would say semi-conscious. We talked about it so much. What is she? What can she understand? I don't know if we really know.

Speaker 2:
[24:12] Right.

Speaker 3:
[24:12] I don't know if we'll ever know, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[24:13] And that's why, like, you didn't tell her about the breast cancer.

Speaker 3:
[24:18] What was surprising to me was how it could still be weird, even though we'd been sort of dealing with this on and off for probably seven years to a decade of my mom not really being completely compasmentous, and yet it still felt very strange to have that distance between us. Because I shared so much with her and she was such a, she was a very intimate person. So to be, like, fake around her was really weird.

Speaker 2:
[24:46] Well, that's the thing, if you don't practice a religion, then you don't know what you're supposed to think. You don't, and you might not know what you think.

Speaker 3:
[24:54] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[24:55] You're Jewish, but you don't practice, right?

Speaker 3:
[24:58] Well, we do Shabbat and the kids were Bat Mitzvah and Henry Lee Bar Mitzvah, but I think it's not a religious affiliation as much as a cultural one, and we love the rituals. But my parents were both, my dad was a staunch atheist, and my mom, I don't think, believed in the afterlife, and so, yeah, we, I think just my sister being together with me for 12 days up until my mom died, I think that was our, we sort of felt like we had sat Shiva. That was our Shiva. I hope that's not blasphemous to say, but we kind of, we sat together for 12 days. We had never spent that much time together since before she left for college, we realized. And it was very beautiful, and we looked at pictures of her and read things that she'd written, and I was writing a lot, and we were laughing a lot, and that was our way of honoring her, I think.

Speaker 2:
[26:09] If you're just joining us, my guest is Amanda Peet. She stars in the new movie, Fantasy Life, and she's one of the stars of the Apple TV series, Your Friends & Neighbors, which recently started its second season. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. Let's lighten things up a little bit with a great flip of an episode of Seinfeld that you are the guest star of.

Speaker 3:
[26:33] Oe Vey Smir.

Speaker 2:
[26:38] So Jerry and George are at the coffee shop where they always meet, and you're their waitress. And Jerry decides that you're attractive, and George adds, and she's a good waitress. So Jerry has two tickets for the Tonys because he wrote some jokes for the Tony Awards and he thinks, well, maybe he should take you to the Tonys. So you agree, he shows up at your door in his tuxedo, and you're wearing a beautiful dressy dress. And as you're looking at each other, out from the back of your apartment, comes a guy who you apparently live with, and Jerry's just like, what? And so here's the dialogue that happens, and Jerry speaks first. Hi. Hi.

Speaker 3:
[27:21] Nice tuxedo.

Speaker 2:
[27:22] Thanks. It's a breakaway.

Speaker 3:
[27:25] Should we go?

Speaker 2:
[27:26] Absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[27:27] Lyle, we're going.

Speaker 2:
[27:28] All right.

Speaker 3:
[27:30] Jerry, this is Lyle.

Speaker 1:
[27:32] Hey, how you doing?

Speaker 3:
[27:34] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[27:39] Have a good time.

Speaker 2:
[27:41] Thanks. Lyle.

Speaker 3:
[27:48] Wow. Wow.

Speaker 1:
[27:51] Wow.

Speaker 2:
[27:52] And then he asked you out again. And I think, does Lyle show up in a towel? When he shows up in a towel? Yeah. And it's just so weird. How did you get the part? Did they already know your work? No. I auditioned for it.

Speaker 3:
[28:07] I auditioned for it. And yeah, it kind of gives me PTSD because it was really scary because it was a really famous show and they were all really famous and I have really bad stage fright. So, you know, and there are a lot of rules for sitcoms. You know, like you have to be still and blank when the other person's delivering the punch line. And I wasn't used to acting like that. Like at one point, Jerry kind of told me off and said, like, you can't do that when I'm saying my line. I was like, oh, God, OK.

Speaker 2:
[28:42] Did you understand your character? I mean, she's such a mystery. Like, why would she be going out with Jerry when she has a living boyfriend? Did you feel like, I need to know. I need to know who my character is.

Speaker 3:
[28:54] No, Terry. I just was like, where do you want me to stand? And what should I just, you know, like I was, God, no. I mean, no. I was really scared to like ask questions and be myself. And, you know, no, no, no, no. Not until way later or if I was on something like, you know, that wasn't intimidating, then I would ask questions. Like, wait, why would I, why would I, what is the deal? How should I play this? But I just, with something like this, I just would just white-knuckle it and just feel like I really hoped that I'm in the ballpark for what they want.

Speaker 2:
[29:33] So I want to play one more clip because your comic timing is so good in this. So this is The Whole Nine Yards from 2000. And Matthew Perry is a dentist. You work with him. And he tells you about a neighbor who's moved next door. And you recognize the name. The neighbor is a hitman. And it's your ambition to be a hitman. So you asked to be introduced. So here's you and Matthew Perry showing up at the door of the hitman's house. And the hitman comes to the door and you just start fangirling. And the hitman is played by Bruce Willis.

Speaker 3:
[30:08] It is you, Mr. Tedeschi. You don't understand. I'm one of your biggest fans.

Speaker 5:
[30:14] I've been following your career since I was a kid.

Speaker 3:
[30:16] You're the reason I'm trying to get into the business.

Speaker 4:
[30:20] What business would that be?

Speaker 3:
[30:22] Contract killing. It's what I want to do. And if I could just have one afternoon of your time, I know that I could learn so much from you.

Speaker 6:
[30:30] So come in.

Speaker 2:
[30:35] You too.

Speaker 3:
[30:40] What's all this?

Speaker 6:
[30:41] Did you say you know this girl?

Speaker 2:
[30:42] She's my assistant.

Speaker 6:
[30:44] Did you know she was a hitter?

Speaker 3:
[30:45] Actually, Mr. Teske, I'm still a virgin. I haven't killed anyone yet, you know, professionally. Oz was supposed to be my first.

Speaker 2:
[30:51] Excuse me?

Speaker 3:
[30:52] His wife hired me. That was you? I was supposed to make it look like an accident, so I went to work for him so I could familiarize myself with his habits.

Speaker 2:
[30:59] Smart.

Speaker 5:
[31:00] Thanks.

Speaker 3:
[31:00] But then after I got to know him, I started to like him.

Speaker 6:
[31:05] First mistake.

Speaker 5:
[31:06] I know.

Speaker 1:
[31:07] You should get close, but not too close.

Speaker 6:
[31:11] Oz, why don't you go pour yourself a martini?

Speaker 2:
[31:12] It's four o'clock in the afternoon. It's a really funny scene. So I'm trying to get my chronology. Was Friends a famous show yet in 2000?

Speaker 3:
[31:25] When you shot this?

Speaker 2:
[31:26] Okay. Yes. So at this point, you're working with two big stars, Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry. What was your image of yourself in terms of public knowledge of you as an actress?

Speaker 3:
[31:41] I don't know. Bruce Willis and Jonathan Lin really picked me out of nowhere. I didn't have any credentials or anything. I hadn't done anything that would make me think that I was going to land this role, and I wasn't known for being funny or anything. So I just auditioned. I read three times and the final two times I was with Bruce, and he picked me, and it was really insane, and it changed everything for me. I didn't really just even think about the fact that it was a comedy. I just, Jonathan Lin said, just think of her as a cheerleader, except for instead of cheerleading, she's doing contract killing. And so I look back on it with a lot of fondness.

Speaker 2:
[32:33] You had what strikes me as an interesting childhood. Your father was a corporate lawyer, took over the London office of his firm when you were young. So the family moved to London. How old were you?

Speaker 3:
[32:44] Seven.

Speaker 2:
[32:45] Okay. What was it like at seven to find yourself in a different country where people spoke English but they spoke it differently? And there were different TV shows and different foods?

Speaker 3:
[32:56] Yeah. We listened to chips on a tape. On a cassette tape, we would record chips, the Highway Patrol show and then listen to it again as entertainment. That's how desperate we were for American shows.

Speaker 2:
[33:12] This was an audio tape?

Speaker 3:
[33:14] Yeah. We would just listen to the audio over and over again and just imagine what we had just seen. I think I went to a really strict little, tiny English school for girls and it was a far cry from the Quaker school I attended in New York. It was definitely a culture shock, but I think looking back, it was really great and I look back on it. I just think it was great that my parents sent us to an English school instead of the American school in London and they really wanted us to become immersed. But it was a lot of family time. We traveled a lot and together as a family. And it was sort of the last hurrah before my parents' divorce. So, and I think, especially since they died recently, I look back on it as a time when we were together as a family and it seemed quite happy.

Speaker 2:
[34:21] Well, we have to take another break. So, let me reintroduce you again. If you're just joining us, my guest is Amanda Peet. She stars in the new movie, Fantasy Life, and she's one of the stars of the Apple TV series, Your Friends & Neighbors, which recently started its second season. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. So, your parents didn't like the idea of you becoming an actor, but you have theater roots in your family. You have two great-grandfathers who had remarkable careers. One became a Manhattan borough president, and the other co-founded the Roxy Theater in Manhattan, where the Rockettes originated, although they were originally the Roxettes, apparently. And your grandfather's name was Samuel Rotherfell, but he was nicknamed Roxy, so the theater was actually named after him, or maybe he named it after himself.

Speaker 3:
[35:12] Yeah, I think he probably named it after himself.

Speaker 2:
[35:15] And when it opened in 1927, it was like the biggest movie theater in the US, or maybe in the world. There were nearly 6,000 seats.

Speaker 3:
[35:25] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[35:27] It was immortalized too in the title song of Guys and Dolls. So here's Stubby K from the original cast recording.

Speaker 5:
[35:52] I'll tell you what's in the Daily News. A story about a guy who bought his wife a small ruby with what otherwise would have been his union dues.

Speaker 3:
[36:02] Yes, yeah, that's a big musical for me.

Speaker 2:
[36:06] Were you in it in high school?

Speaker 5:
[36:08] I was.

Speaker 2:
[36:09] So many people have been in a production of Guys and Dolls in school.

Speaker 3:
[36:13] The problem is, is that I wasn't Adelaide, all I want to do is be Adelaide.

Speaker 2:
[36:17] Who were you?

Speaker 3:
[36:18] I was Sarah.

Speaker 2:
[36:19] You were Sarah, great.

Speaker 3:
[36:20] But the fun part is Adelaide.

Speaker 2:
[36:22] I think Sarah's a really great part with great songs.

Speaker 3:
[36:25] Well, she has one drunk song, which is really fun.

Speaker 2:
[36:27] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[36:28] I still want to play Adelaide. I still, even if I have to go to some small town, I'd really just like to do it and she would just be a 54-year-old Adelaide.

Speaker 2:
[36:38] Who's still not married. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[36:41] In fact, yes, it would be a lot more understandable. She's so upset.

Speaker 2:
[36:45] You want to be able to sing A Poison Could Develop a Cold? Yes. Is there a lot of Roxy lore in your family?

Speaker 3:
[36:55] Weirdly, no. I feel like it's like pulling teeth in my mom. It was like pulling teeth in my mom's family. I think maybe the marriage wasn't great. This is my grandmother's parents. So I think, and Graham's, Roxy's wife was the one my mom really loved. So I think that she probably, I think Roxy really hurt her. I think that's sort of the deal. So we didn't celebrate him that much.

Speaker 2:
[37:26] Right.

Speaker 3:
[37:27] I don't know what my parents would say about Roxy Rothafell. I know the family lore is that he died broke. I think that my parents felt like there was something a little bit facile about acting, like a little bit frivolous and, like I said, vain. So it's different if you're in front of the camera, I think, than if you're behind the camera.

Speaker 2:
[37:49] I see. I see.

Speaker 3:
[37:50] And also, you know, the truth is, is I started out doing a fair amount of commercials, and I was on a daytime soap opera, and then something that was sort of a soap opera called Central Park West. And so I think those shows, you know, were catering to a certain kind of audience, and my parents were not that audience. And so I think they were not disappointed, but just kind of like, I mean, I think at some point in my career, my mom said something to me like, the things you're doing don't articulate anything about who you are or something like that. This was like later, but I still think that they weren't always excited about just the thing that was the biggest thing, you know?

Speaker 2:
[38:43] So you have been married for about 20 years to David Benioff, the co-creator of the HBO series Game of Thrones. And I was introduced to his work in 2003 when the movie The 25th Hour came out. He had adapted it from his novel of the same name, Spike Lee directed it. And I really, it's a film I would really recommend. Did you already know each other back then, 2003?

Speaker 3:
[39:10] That was around the time of our first date. It was a blind date and I think 25th Hour was about to come out. So I knew that he'd written this novel and I knew that maybe that's about all I knew.

Speaker 2:
[39:24] So how did it change your life when Game of Thrones became this like international phenomenon?

Speaker 3:
[39:35] Well, it was insane. It was absolutely insane. And it was a very precious time. We were living in Belfast for the summers in Northern Ireland. We had little babies. We were always with David's partner, DB. Weiss and his wife, Andrea, and the four of us were thick as thieves living in Europe. And it was incredible.

Speaker 2:
[40:06] Why were you living?

Speaker 3:
[40:07] Timing of everything, like having little babies and having Game of Thrones blow up was especially because Andrea and I, I don't know if you know this, but when we first saw the dailies, we were in my apartment in Belfast and we thought the dailies looked horrific and stupid. And we were literally like, this is just going to be an embarrassment. That was the pilot of Game of Thrones. And boy, were we wrong.

Speaker 2:
[40:36] What made you think it looked stupid?

Speaker 3:
[40:40] I think just we thought that there were these vines on the columns, and we thought they looked really cheesy, and then we thought like the hair looked really cheesy, and we just were so full of negativity, and we were just being mean wives. And then, you know, six months later, we were like, can I buy an Emmy dress? So yeah, we ate our words. And yeah, and my mom would come to Belfast and come to Europe with us, with her caregiver, and it was very special.

Speaker 2:
[41:20] There's a lot of violence in Game of Thrones, and it went on, I mean, the series lasted for several years. Was it hard to prevent your children from watching it?

Speaker 3:
[41:30] They have no interest in watching it.

Speaker 2:
[41:32] Why not?

Speaker 3:
[41:33] They don't like our work. And I'm not even saying that as... It's just they just don't seem to respond to anything we've done, including Game of Thrones. So far. Maybe it's like a kind of just... My parents aren't cool thing.

Speaker 2:
[41:57] Did they say you're moving?

Speaker 3:
[41:58] My guess is... Oh, yes, they did. They did. They did. They said they had to take out their phones when I was kissing the manny, so that they could look away. But yeah. I mean, I said, why don't you watch Something's Gotta Give? Because I think you might like it. And then they turned it off after they saw Jack Nicholson on top of me, or me on top of him, because they said it was inappropriate and sexist and gross. So they turned it off.

Speaker 2:
[42:29] Well, it wasn't appropriate.

Speaker 3:
[42:32] Right. I said to them, that's the point of the movie. You'll see.

Speaker 2:
[42:35] Right. Right. Because how old are you? Like 20 or something in it?

Speaker 3:
[42:40] I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[42:40] You're very young and he's decades older and ends up dating your mother, played by Diane Keaton. So yeah. Do you think of that movie differently now?

Speaker 3:
[42:57] Not so much. I think the conceit of the movie is positive. He falls in love with the right person. But to be honest, I haven't seen it in a while. But my guess is I would still adore that performance by Diane and feel like the movie is worthy.

Speaker 2:
[43:16] Since Diane Keaton starred with you in Something's Gotta Give and because she died recently, it would be lovely if you could share some memories of working with her.

Speaker 3:
[43:28] I mean, the thing about Diane when I knew her is I feel like, very similarly with my mom, I feel like she was curious above all else. Like she was a woman who was interested. And not at all preoccupied with how she was being perceived and just such a maverick kind of, and she was always so kind and hilarious and self-deprecating. Everything you would hope she was, she would be she was.

Speaker 2:
[44:17] Well, I want to thank you so much for coming on our show. It's just really been delightful to talk with you.

Speaker 3:
[44:24] Thank you so much, Terry. This is a dream come true for me.

Speaker 2:
[44:28] Amanda Peet stars in the new film Fantasy Life and stars opposite John Hamm in the series Your Friends & Neighbors. Season 2 is streaming on Apple TV. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, an Israeli and a Palestinian who each experienced unimaginable loss on either side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mao'oz Enan's parents were killed on October 7th by Hamas. Aziz Abu Sara's brother was killed by Israeli soldiers as a teenager in Palestine. Today, they call each other brothers. They'll talk about their shared mission for peace. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at nprfreshair. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Annemarie Boldenado, Lauren Krenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challener, Susan Yacundi, Anna Bellman, and Nico Gonzalez-Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly Sivi-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.