Wow.
Zosia Mamet, the actress who starred in “Girls,” has written a memoir of her still short career in Hollywood called “Does This Make Me Funny?”
An excerpt in the Hollywood Reporter doesn’t name names. But Mamet says she quit a hot TV show when she as 19 after on set abuse from the showrunner.
The show is obviously “Mad Men,” and the show runner Matthew Weiner, who had a terrible reputation with actresses.
Mamet — daughter of Lindsay Crouse and David Mamet — lays it out. “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.”
It gets worse. The show runner berates her for something minor while shooting to the point where Mamet called her agent and refused to return.
She recalls: “I ran into that showrunner at the Emmys a few years later. Both of our shows were nominated. He pretended not to know who I was. They swept the awards that night and part of me resented him for that. But you know, he hasn’t really made anything since. And sometimes I think about him sitting in his office alone feeling sad and angry and anxious and wondering if everyone’s forgotten him, and for a moment it makes me feel sorry for him, feel compassion for him, hope that his life isn’t too bad…”
