Zosia Mamet, the actor, hasn’t seen Madame Web, the Marvel franchise’s turkey that crashed and launched a thousand memes. “I chose not to,” she says w
Zosia Mamet, the actor, hasn’t seen Madame Web, the Marvel franchise’s turkey that crashed and launched a thousand memes. “I chose not to,” she says with a smile. Mamet appeared in the Spider-Man spin-off, which has an 11% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, was described by one reviewer as a “Chornobyl-level disaster”, and became one of this year’s biggest box-office bombs.
The 36-year-old actor laughs awkwardly when I mention it. For a few days in February, Madame Web – and lead actor Dakota Johnson’s sublime press tour – was all the internet wanted to talk about.
What went wrong? “I think it’s really tough with movies like that,” Mamet sighs. They’re “made by committee,” she says, “because there’s so much money put into them. Nothing creative made by committee is ever brilliant.”
Mamet is best known for her breakout role as Shoshanna Shapiro, the neurotic aspiring girl-boss of HBO’s Girls, but she has also played a beatnik photo editor in Mad Men, a straight-talking lawyer in The Flight Attendant, and a lovelorn aristocrat in forthcoming Netflix ensemble comedy The Decameron.
If one thing unifies Mamet’s characters, it’s that they march “to the beat of their own drum, or are a little bit left of centre,” she says. Although Mamet can play it straight – in Netflix’s earnest but dull Tales of the City, she played a sullen documentary film-maker – she is a gifted comedian, with a knack for physical humour. As Shoshanna in Girls, she vibrates with hummingbird energy; in The Decameron, there is a pantomime quality to her gasps and swoons.
In The Decameron, which is loosely based on the 14th-century Boccaccio text that inspired Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, a group of nobles congregate at an Italian villa to escape the plague-ridden masses, with predictable results. Mamet portrays her character, Pampinea, as frivolous and desperate for love: the running gag is that she is a 28-year-old maid with sagging breasts. She was “a hoot to play,” says Mamet. “I just threw tantrums constantly.”
Mamet speaks via video call from a state she asks me not to identify, for privacy reasons. She relocated there two years ago to find warmer weather with her husband, actor Evan Jonigkeit. Amiable and self-deprecating, she seems tired; I suspect she isn’t thrilled at the prospect of an imminent press tour in New York. Mamet is a homebody, happiest when in bed by 11pm, or riding her horse, Herbie.
Mamet is not a method actor. “I don’t really think about characters as their own entities,” she says. “They are more like a suit I put on for the moment.” Except for Shoshanna. “Sometimes she pops into my head and I wonder what she’s doing now. I don’t know – it’s like a pair of jeans that got frozen. It’s like she stands up on her own. I miss her a lot. I think she’s the only character I’ve ever played that I genuinely miss.”
In 2014, Mamet wrote a column for Glamour magazine about her teenage eating disorder, which led to her being hospitalised at 17. Her father, Pulitzer-winning playwright and film-maker David Mamet, told her that she was “not allowed to die”. Was her decision to live outside image-conscious LA in part to protect her from the possibility of relapse? “It’s definitely triggering,” says Mamet of Hollywood. “I think it’s also harder to tease out reality from dysmorphia when you are living in a world that kind of values dysmorphia.”
Mamet’s parents separated when she was a baby and she was raised by her mother, the actor Lindsay Crouse, in LA. There were times Mamet felt like an intruder in her own family. “I’ve often sort of thought that maybe I was left on my family’s doorstep or something. I have always felt as if I didn’t quite fit with my family from so many angles.” She was bullied throughout primary school, eventually being home-schooled to escape her tormentors. “I was in my head a lot. And I was a bit of a chubby kid. And I was kind of anxious.”
Mamet feels her parents did the best they could with what they had available to them. She is working on a book of personal essays and has been writing candidly about her experiences. Is there anything in there she’s worried about? “Oh my God,” she exclaims. “Are you kidding? The entire thing! I’m terrified. No one is going to want to read it, everyone is going to hate it, I should probably fake my own death so I don’t have to publish it.”
Mamet is willing to share remarkably personal stories. In addition to writing about her eating disorder, in 2017 she gave a talk about her experience with pelvic floor dysfunction, which was serially misdiagnosed for six years, at one point causing her to contemplate suicide. One doctor told her she was an “uppity” actor; another poured acid in her vagina. “I’m a pretty private introverted human in my daily life, which is a funny dichotomy,” says Mamet. “But, I don’t know, I’ve always just enjoyed sharing.”
Mamet leans forward. “We tell stories to make people feel less alone,” she says. “If writing about my own life in a really personal, open way can make someone else feel less alone and perhaps help them through a struggle or a time of darkness, or just make them see their own experience in mine and feel like it’s not singular to them, then it will be worth it.”
The Decameron is available globally on Netflix beginning 25 July
Q: What do you think went wrong with Madame Web?
A: I think it’s really tough with movies like that. They’re made by committee, because there’s so much money put into them. Nothing creative made by committee is ever brilliant.
Q: You have a knack for physical humour. How do you prepare for roles that require comedy?
A: I think I just kind of do it instinctively. I like to find the absurdity in a character and just go with it. In The Decameron, I would just throw tantrums constantly.
Q: You are working on a book of personal essays. What can readers expect?
A: Oh my God, I don’t know! I’m terrified. It’s all my deepest, darkest secrets. But, I hope that it can make people feel less alone.
Q: You have spoken candidly about your experiences with eating disorders and pelvic floor dysfunction. What do you hope to achieve by sharing these stories?
A: I think we tell stories to make people feel less alone. If writing about my own life in a really personal, open way can make someone else feel less alone and perhaps help them through a struggle or a time of darkness, or just make them see their own experience in mine and feel like it’s not singular to them, then it will be worth it.
Q: What do you hope to achieve with your book?
A: I hope that people will read it and feel less alone, and maybe it will help them through a struggle or a time of darkness. Or maybe it will just make them see their own experience in mine and feel like it’s not singular to them.
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