Even before meeting the “Long Bright River” team, Amanda Seyfried believed it was her fate to play a Philly beat cop.
The star, who kicked off her career playing Karen in “Mean Girls” and Sophie in “Mamma Mia,” has wanted to push the boundaries of what people expect from her blonde, 5’3” exterior – surprising audiences most recently with her Emmy Award-winning performance as Elizabeth Holmes in “The Dropout” and now her role as Mickey in the new Peacock miniseries.
“No one ever saw me in that way,” the actress told TheWrap.
“People want to cast you in things that they can see you doing, and I get that. I totally get that,” Seyfried said. “But now I’m at a point in my career where anything goes because people are like, ‘I trust her to do that,’ or at least I’m hoping they’re saying that.”
Seyfried has always wanted to play a cop, she said, but Mickey was the first character, who she felt was a human being that just happened to be an officer – “I could really find my way in there,” she said.
Mickey is not like any other Philadelphia police officer, though. While she patrols the Avenue, where the opioid epidemic has ravaged through the Kensington community, her connection to the women goes deeper than many of the men on the force.
“She’s a patrol cop, who is not all that good at her job, but her superpower is that she’s from this neighborhood,” executive producer and co-writer Nikki Toscano told TheWrap. “I loved Mickey’s voice. She was flawed, and she told you so. I loved the fact that she was such an unreliable narrator.”
Seyfried’s Mickey is contemplative and slow to speak, qualities that Toscano and author Liz Moore had to carefully navigate in adapting the novel for the screen.
“We knew what was in her head because it was written in first person, not because she was saying what was on her mind,” Toscano said. “So the big question became, how do we get what’s inside Mickey’s head out into the world?”
One solution was casting the Emmy Award-winning actress as the show’s protagonist, but also surrounding her with characters who did the talking for her, Toscano said.
For Moore’s first foray into producing and adapting her novel, she said that leaning on the authenticity of the Philadelphia and Kensington community made the work specific and realistic. Though “Long Bright River” is not based on a true story, the characters are certainly based on the lived experiences of the real women on the Avenue and police force in Kensington.
“The specific is the universal,” Moore told TheWrap. “And the more specific we can get about this family and this neighborhood, I think the more universal it will ultimately feel to the viewer.”
“Playing somebody who’s unreliable is realistic,” she said. “Playing someone with lots of failings, playing someone who makes mistakes, and playing someone who’s not a great mother or a great partner is realistic because we can’t check all those boxes.”
Moore and Seyfried both went on ride-along’s with Philadelphia cops to research for the novel and the limited series. The leading actress spent time in Kensington speaking to community members, even learning the French horn, to inform her performance.
The “Long Bright River” team also met with harm reduction organizations to authentically represent addiction in the series, sex workers in Kensington and advisors from the city attempting to develop the neighborhood. The executive producers sought to pay homage to Philly by casting local actors and extras, bringing on local graffiti artists and engaging in constant conversation with the community, even hosting a special screening in the city a week before its premiere.
“The tension between the cops and the community is always – they are always at odds with each other,” Seyfried said. “Because the cops are supposed to clean up the avenue, but the avenue is where these people live. It’s so unique.”
Mickey’s role within the police department as one of the few women and one of the few officers from the area proves difficult when fellow officers dismissed the mysterious murders of several young women on the alley as overdoses. But author and executive producer Moore said the heart of the story lies in the family dynamics that are unveiled almost more than the murder mystery.
“This is a family drama as much as it’s a crime drama,” Moore said. “I think viewers might be most shocked by some revelations about the family rather than the case, and so it was nice to be able to have two genres to to work from when conceiving first the book, and then this series.”
“Ultimately that it’s a story about the lengths that we will go for the people that we love,” Toscano said. “I hope that it inspires a sense of empathy and compassion for those that are suffering with addiction and the families that love them.”
Thought the eight-episode series does not have any plans for a Season 2, Seyfried said that she would certainly return to the troubled officer.
“Oh yeah, I would go back to Mickey. I think we all would,” Seyfried said. “The audience controls the narrative. If the audience wants more of Mickey, they’ll probably get more of Mickey.”
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