Amanda Seyfried said she went to some “scary dark places” for her latest role in Long Bright River, playing a beat cop on the mean streets of Philadelphia.
In the eight-part drama, which dropped on Peacock+ March 13 and will have its international premiere at TV festival Series Mania in Lille this week, Seyfried plays Mickey, a Philly-raised overachiever who it once seemed was bound to escape her blue-collar roots. Instead, she finds herself a single mom patrolling her own Kensington neighborhood, trying to connect with the addicts and sex workers she encounters every day. One of them is her own sister, Kasey (played by Ashleigh Cummings), who has ended up, literally, on the wrong side of the tracks. When sex workers start turning up dead, and Kasey vanishes, Mickey suspects a serial killer is on the loose and that her sister could be his next victim.
Adapted by Nikki Toscano and Liz Moore from Moore’s novel of the same name, Long Bright River is a drama about intergenerational trauma, the opioid crisis, and institutional corruption packaged in a police procedural. Mickey’s search for the killer is the engine that drives the plot but the core of the story is Mickey’s relationship with Kasey, their father [played by John Doman], and her young son Thomas [Callum Vinson]. “The North Star for us was the love story between the two sisters, unfolding at the same time of this murder mystery,” says Toscano.
Long Bright River is drawing comparisons to Kate Winslet starrer Mare of Easttown — another Pennsylvania-set crime series centered on a mature female cop with family issues — and its devotion to grown-up themes stands apart from the current wave of crime comedy and action entertainment series.
Seyfried and Toscano spoke to The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the show’s Series Mania premiere, on Seyfried’s transformation for the role, including learning to play the English horn “in like 10 seconds” and on the courage to tell dark story in dark times.
Amanda, this is a very different role for you. I think it’s fair to say most people wouldn’t immediately think of you as a beat cop. Why did you want to take this character on?
Amanda Seyfried: I knew that I wanted to play somebody that scared me. Playing a cop never felt like it would have made sense for me because I didn’t believe that I could kind of hold that kind of authority, but then you put on the uniform — I mean, real cops must feel this way — and all of a sudden, you have this edge, you have this shield, for better or for worse. We have a crazy relationship with cops in general, at this point in the world. I felt like it was the best time to play somebody who really does their job with dignity and respect for civilians. I was one of the good guys. It was a dream come true, especially because it’s not really a cop show. We’re talking about crimes and the main character is a cop, but it’s really a show about family and human beings and and trauma.
Nikki, I was struck that the series is a lot darker than most of the television getting made right now. Was it difficult in the current marketplace to pitch a dark show that goes into trauma, drug abuse, and sex work, and that doesn’t have a sort of easy hero in the center of it, or an easy, happy end?
Nikki Toscano: Well the show has been about five years in the making so we pitched it at a very different time. When we originally pitched this, I think that people really embraced the family drama aspect. The book was received really well. It was on Barack Obama’s top books of 2020 list, so when we were talking about it, what people responded to was that this was a story about the humanity in the darkness, the light in the dark.
The show has come out in the U.S. on Peacock+, what was that experience like?
Nikki Toscano: It was unique for me. It was a big drop, the whole show going out at once. A lot of the shows that I’ve done before have been maybe the first three episodes and then weekly. So it was interesting to see. I was getting calls like, “oh my god, we watched all eight episodes yesterday!” I was like: ‘Who was taking care of your children?”
Amanda Seyfried: That’s really funny. I wish every show did that. I I thought at first it was a weird plan but that’s how I watch TV at night — four episodes at a time. I was worried that people would feel like they were in Philly, that it was authentic. But it’s been really nice. Even my therapist told me that she forgot it was me. And therapists do not lie.
What was the most challenging single scene for you to do?
Amanda Seyfried: The thing that jumps out right away is the scene between Kasey (Ashleigh Cummings) and my character Mickey, when I find out that the killer might be [Mickey’s former partner] Truman (Nicholas Pinnock). That was really hard. I was playing so many things, playing disbelief, but also fear that [Kasey] was using again, so I’m not sure if she is high or not. There’s a lot happening in that scene. In every scene really. It’s no wonder I went dark for a while, I couldn’t handle anything else. I spent five days a week at an apartment in the city without my kids. I had to really live in the space. It did cost me some, even as an older actor who knows how to compartmentalize. Scenes like that, where I’m playing so many things, and I don’t know how I can do this. Every few days there were challenges like that, where I was just like: I don’t know how I’m going to play all this in one go. But we had incredible directors, Nikki being one of them, and I felt incredibly supported, and I knew that the end of the day, they were going to get what they needed. It was worth it.
Nikki, you co-wrote this with Liz Moore, the author of the novel. What was it that she was keen on keeping from the book and what was she open to change to fit the series format?
Nikki Toscano: She was incredibly open. From our first conversations, she was not interested in doing a replica of her book in series form. Early on we were having conversations ad nauseam, about what were the important things to keep. The North Star for us was the love story between the two sisters, unfolding at the same time of this murder mystery. I think what was also very important for us was the way that Kensington was portrayed. And we wanted to employ a device, like in the book, where we could effortlessly weave between the past and the present. Those were really our North Stars. Some of the details from the book were abandoned and new details came into the series but everything was informed by the heart of these women and their characters.
With Amanda involved, was there any talk of squeezing in a musical episode?
Amanda Seyfried: Oh sure (laughs). We shot a whole musical episode but it just wasn’t working so we scrapped it.
Nikki Toscano: Having a cop singing Joni Mitchell just didn’t fit, you know? But we actually did bring in music. In the book, Mickey is fascinated with becoming a history professor. We changed that into he having a love of music and playing an instrument [the English horn]. We wanted to use that to show the promise this character had and the loss of that promise. Amanda learned in like 10 seconds, which is insane. She’s insanely gifted, with singing, playing musical instruments, everything.
Amanda Seyfried: It is fun when you have that extra challenge. It was such a random challenge, but it really helps ground you in this world. It was a fun extra bonus, fun, hard, and interesting to do.
You’ve been doing a lot of darker material, in films recently, with Atom Egyoan’s Seven Veils, or Amy Koppelman’s Mouthful of Air. Does this mean your happy singing and dancing days are behind you?
Amanda Seyfried: No, no and no. I have lots of singing and dancing coming out. I went straight from this to a musical [Mona Fastvold’s Ann Lee] but it is a dark musical. Here’s the thing, life is dark and hard and scary. I love comedy, I really do. But also I just love breeding a kind of awareness, compassion in other people by playing these roles. I don’t fear going to the dark places, for the sake of telling a real story, because life is dark. And by looking at the dark we also can appreciate the light, you know?