In March, Amanda Seyfried sat on TV host Jimmy Fallon’s faded blue couch, under the bright studio lights, carefully holding a dulcimer in her lap. She was nervous. For the first time in her career, she was about to sing in front of a large group of people.
At first, she stalled. “Does anyone know what song I’m going to sing?” she asked the audience, starting and stopping again to inquire if they were ready. Silence hung uncomfortably in the air. But when she finally began Joni Mitchell’s classic song California, the mood shifted, and her extraordinary talent shone through.
“All I want to do is sing, and I just don’t sing because I don’t want to put myself out there.” Seyfried laments to The National. “But it went viral. I thought it was something that would scare me, but it didn’t. And I’m like, wait a minute, maybe there’s something in me that’s been unlocked.”
You would never know it, but this has been the story of Seyfried’s career. Time and time again, she has surprised audiences by first surprising herself. She jumped from the light comedy of Mean Girls (2004) to the virtuosa prima donna of Mamma Mia! (2008) and Les Miserables (2012). She transformed into real-life figures such as Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout (2022) and Marion Davies in Mank (2020), garnering major awards in the process.
This year, she has pushed herself further yet again, playing a Philadelphia beat cop in the harrowing Long Bright River, now streaming on Tod in the Middle East.
“I just don’t want to be bored in who I’m playing, you know?” Seyfried says. “I don’t choose things willy-nilly. I choose things because they have many elements that will enhance my life and career.”
She doesn’t have time to waste, she explains. “I’m away from my kids when I’m working.” So she does things that scare her – that challenge her.
But there is still one thing that scares her too much to try: “Broadway,” Seyfried says. “Giving an unadulterated performance straight through every day. That’s the thing that scares me most in this business, and in life. Because it’s live. If one little thing goes wrong, or you feel scared, you can’t just stop. All eyes are on you and the responsibility and weight of that is just too much.”
But the Fallon experience has changed her. “Maybe I can do that for people, and for myself too,” Seyfried says. And there is a musical she has in mind.
“I’ve been developing a Thelma & Louise musical with original music by Neko Case, which is just as insane as you can imagine,” Seyfried says. “Neko is writing completely one-of-a-kind music with a beautiful story written by [Lebanese-American screenwriter] Callie Khouri. It's got to workshop in other places. Maybe I’ll end up doing that, and it’ll be great. But that’s the thing. It’s an untapped place for me.”
Based on the Academy-Award winning film, Seyfried's Thelma & Louise musical has been in the works since at least 2021, and has been so important to her that she skipped the 2023 Golden Globes ceremony where she won best actress, in order to work on it in New York.
Whether she ends up doing it or not, it is a difficult choice for her in either direction. But it seems that anything worth doing is difficult. Long Bright River, for which she served as an executive producer, was also a taxing affair. She spent months in the Philadelphia cold, working with bleak material.
“It definitely took the cake in terms of challenge. I was in such a dark place – I had to find levity where I could for survival. I even campaigned for three-day weekends, because the shoot days were so long, but these budgets are so tight. They’re like: ‘Nah, we just have to shoot, shoot, shoot.’ And I’m like: ‘This is not the way I want to live.’ But at the same time, I was doing what I love,” Seyfried says.
Seyfried, 39, has two children with her husband, actor Thomas Sadowski. Her daughter Nina is seven, and her son Thomas is four. The family live on a farm in upstate New York, populated by 34 animals including 17 chickens and ducks, horses, goats, donkeys, cats and dogs. It is the place she dreams of when she is away filming, including for The Housemaid co-starring Sydney Sweeney, coming later this year.
She struggles with paying the passion tax, but can't bring herself to do otherwise. She knows that if she took easy jobs – working on big-budget fare, the kinds of roles that would assure her creature comforts and lax schedules – they would not fulfil her at a soul level.
“But I also have a passion for my kids, for my animals,” Seyfried says. Because of that, she does not know if she will be able to do Broadway any time soon. “I don’t know if I’m going to find the time to pay the passion tax and get on stage. I know the feeling of that is like nothing else – it’s just terrifying.”
But what scares her is also what drives her. She has been repeatedly thinking back to her experience working with David Lynch on Twin Peaks: The Return since he died in January.
“I was such a fan. I remember auditioning for it, which involved just sitting with the casting director and having a conversation for half an hour, and then they sent that tape to David Lynch. I was with my sister on her wedding day when they told me I got the job, and I screamed at the top of my lungs,” Seyfried says
But as scary as it was to work with one of her heroes, it ended up being perhaps the most fulfilling experience of her career.
“He treated me like a collaborator. I felt like I was invited on set because he was excited to see what I brought to the table. And that simple feeling liberated me to feel like it was my project too. I wasn't just a pawn in his creation. It was wonderful,” Seyfried says.
“And he would always call me Becky, like my character,” she adds.
David Lynch, too, was someone who spent his life paying the passion tax, all in service of his art. And he was fearless. Maybe Seyfried will be fearless too, one day. But more likely, that fear will stay. And she'll overcome it, time and time again, just as she has always done.
BeIN Media Group is the official rights holder of Long Bright River in the Mena region