Zosia Mamet suffered for our entertainment. But then quit.
Zosia Mamet, star of Girls and daughter of great screenwriter and tremendous blowhard David Mamet (I love his work so much), has a new book of personal essays coming out titled Does This Make Me Funny?. In it she recounts working on an unnamed show which she quit after just a few episodes due to an abusive showrunner.
While some of the details don’t 100% line-up, it is pretty clear she is talking about her time on the show Mad Men and showrunner Matthew Weiner (a great screenwriter and terrible person).
Here’s a fun extract:
The show’s creator and showrunner was an intense human. He directed some episodes every season but not all of them. This one was being directed by someone else. The showrunner wasn’t always around, but when he was, the entire vibe of the set would change, as if a cold front had swept the soundstage. I never entirely understood why. He was definitely spirited and opinionated, but there’s way worse than that in Hollywood. I had always thought there was maybe something I was missing.
I was correct.
We were doing a blocking rehearsal when he showed up on set. The scene was short and easy. I was meant to come into the office, tell everyone I had photos of something important, remove them from the manila envelope I was carrying, and place them on the table. Then everyone had a few more lines and that was it. So we’re rehearsing, I walk in, I go to take the photos out of the envelope, and the showrunner calls “Cut.” Not the director of the episode, the showrunner. And we all look at each other like, Did somebody do something wrong? We all thought the scene was going fine.
He gets up out of his chair at the monitors and walks toward me slowly, looking at the ground the entire time like he’s trying to figure out how to word what he’s about to say. And when he finally stops right in front of me, he takes a few more beats before he lifts his head, looks at me, and says, “What the fuck are you doing?” To which I say, “Um…rehearsing?”
And then he grabs my hand that’s holding the manila envelope and he says, “No! What the fuck are you doing with this! That’s not how you take something out of an envelope! Do it again!”
You can read more at THR.
Stories like this have me hugely conflicted. I appreciate that nobody should behave that way and that nobody should be made to feel that way.
But also…
Matthew Weiner made what is arguably the greatest TV show ever made. One that I love dearly.
Is it possible that good people don’t make great art? I know from experience that this newsletter never gets sent until I berate my third intern of the morning….
News Desk
Amazing it took this long, but NBC Universal are launching a Law & Order FAST channel with 24/7 streaming of the iconic mothership show. It will launch just playing episodes of seasons 6-10 on loop (141 episodes), but will soon start including older and newer seasons. Read: THR
Charlie Brooker has a great-sounding very sombre crime drama (*cough*) coming to Netflix that we all should be putting on our radar… Read: thefutoncritic
Production assistants on The Pitt have voted to unionize. Read: THR
How Are You? It’s Alan (Partridge) is now streaming on HBO Max. It’s the first international territory to buy the show. It is part of a deal that includes of the Partridge shows, and a couple of other shows including two seasons of comedy Cheaters. Read: Mediaweek
Nina Dobrev says she eventually left The Vampire Diaries because she wasn’t being paid as much as her costars. Read: Variety
Trailer Park
Swiped debuts on Hulu Sept 19.
Inspired by the provocative real-life story of the visionary founder of online dating platform Bumble, "Swiped" introduces recent college grad Whitney Wolfe, played by Lily James, as she uses extraordinary grit and ingenuity to break into the male-dominated tech industry and launch an innovative, globally lauded dating app (two, actually), paving the way to becoming the youngest female self-made billionaire.
Watching You debuts on Stan Oct 3.
Lina discovers her affair with a stranger has been captured by a hidden camera and is blackmailed with the footage. Amid mounting threats, she sets out to unmask the insidious voyeur, only to realise that the danger is closer than she imagined.
Hazbin Hotel returns Oct 29 on Prime Video for season 2.
Cats Eye debuts on Hulu Sept 26.
By day, Hitomi, Rui, and Ai run a cafe, but by night these three sisters work as a team of thieves determined to recover their father's stolen art collection.
That’s the newsletter for today.
Consider becoming a paid supporter of Always Be Watching.
Connect with Dan on Bluesky. Connect with Dan on Letterboxd. Connect with Dan on Linkedin. Email Dan @ alwaysbewatching.com or just reply to this email.
