Interview: Zosia Mamet on subverting expectations in ‘The Flight Attendant’ and having pets who see dead people

Zosia Mamet is out to prove that she’s not just a one-trick pony. 

As high-powered attorney Annie on HBO Max’s The Flight Attendant, Mamet subverts the role she’s best known for – the neurotic and frenetic Shoshanna on HBO’s Girls. To hear Mamet talk about it, the choice was intentional. 

The role, her first major television gig since Girls went off the air in 2017, provides the chance to show off some dramatic acting chops, a journey she shared with the show’s star Kaley Cuoco, who was coming off 12 seasons of The Big Bang Theory. Over the course of filming, the two became fast friends as they both pivoted from their best-known parts, anchoring the series with the heart and passion of their fiery friendship. 

Daniel Trainor and Sam Stone talked to Mamet about the joy of finding herself in Annie’s bougie mess, the lengths she’d go to help a friend cover up a murder, how COVID disrupted filming in New York and what it’s like having a dog who sees ghosts.

The season finale of The Flight Attendant is available to stream on HBO Max on December 17th, with all previous episodes available now.

Daniel Trainor: Hi Zosia! How are you?

Zosia Mamet: I’m good! How are you guys?

DT: We’re great! We’re so excited to chat with you.

ZM: Aww. I’m so happy you guys feel that way. I’m excited to talk to you, too.

DT: On The Flight Attendant you get to live one of my greatest fantasies, which is walking around New York City as a powerful lawyer wearing gorgeous coats and sweaters. I’m curious, how much did Annie’s wardrobe, which is a very specific aesthetic, help you get in character and into her aura?

ZM: l would say it helped a lot, actually. I’m a pretty low-key gal. I love me some fashion, but the majority of real life is spent either in my riding clothes or in sweatpants, particularly since lockdown happened. I basically go to the barn, come home and shower and put on sweatpants.

DT: So, a dream life.

ZM: Dream life. Livin’ the dream over here. I’m like a jeans, boots, t-shirt, sweater kind of a gal. I keep it simple. Annie is a fancy lady. It was interesting because I spent the majority of my adult career on a show where I wore things that felt so contrary to anything that I would wear. Shoshanna wore such insanely crazy clothes and outfits. It helped, in a way, get into character because they added this layer of insanity that got to do a lot of the talking for me. Our costume designer Cat Thomas was so brilliant and she really nailed Annie. Her clothes are not loudly fancy. They’re so nice. 

DT: She looks rich!

ZM: Exactly! Everything Cat picked has such delicious, high quality. She picked these colors that she knew would pop on-screen and with my hair color. It was always simple, just so elevated. I think that really helped me. Annie, as a human, has a really thick shell. She has a really thick shield of armor, which is how she compartmentalizes what she does and how she gets through the day. Having those clothes really helped with that a lot. It felt like an extra set of very fancy, very expensive armor. I wanted to keep all of them. 

Sam Stone: Has the show made you think about how far you would go to protect or defend a friend. So let’s say, hypothetically, that you and I are BFFs. We’ve spent a lot of time riding horses together and maybe we go to your family’s house for Christmas. Maybe I murder somebody, are you calling the cops or are you helping me bury the body?

ZM: One thousand percent, bury the body. I’m a quality, not quantity person when it comes to friends. That’s possibly because I’m a strange weirdo, so I only mesh so well with certain people. But when you’re my friend, you’re my friend for life. I joke about it with my best friends. But 100%, when I love you, I love you with all of my heart no matter what. If you mess up and you accidentally kill someone, we’re going to figure it out. Like, how do we get to Canada or Mexico? I don’t know, are we dissolving this body in acid? Is that the best way? Are we throwing them in the Hudson River? We’re definitely going to assess our options. We’re going to be smart about it, we’re going to be strategic. But I’m one thousand percent helping you get out of it.

DT: I’m so happy to hear that, Zosia. That really does make me happy.

ZM: (laughs)

DT: I was really impressed with Kaley’s work on the show and my favorite scenes were the ones with you two. You had such natural chemistry. I know that you’ve talked about how you two bonded over horses. When the cameras stopped rolling, what else would you two talk about and how strong did that bond become?

ZM: Very strong. We text on a daily basis.

DT: Tell her we say hi.

ZM: I will. I literally have a text from her that I need to respond to. So, I will. We didn’t know each other at all. I obviously knew who she was, but we didn’t know each other from Adam in terms of humans when we first met. Our first audition was a magical chemistry moment, where I feel like Annie and [Cuoco’s character] Cassie were born. In the audition, they were like ‘if you want to improv, go for it.’ Kaley, at the top of our first scene, came up and booped me on the nose and I swatted her hand away. I feel like Annie and Cassie were born in that moment. After that, it was the most easy, organic, joyous thing ever. If they never called cut, they would have hours of tapes of Kaley and I improving the weirdest things ever. We could just go forever. So, thankfully there was someone in charge making sure that didn’t happen. 

The horse girl connection is very real. It’s hard to explain if you’re not a horse girl. It’s very real, it’s very intense. It’s like a sisterly blood bond. If you’re a horse girl and you meet another horse girl, that’s it. You’re bonded for life.

DT: I wish I was a horse girl.

ZM: Listen, there’s still time.

DT: Is there, though? I don’t know. 

SS: Get a horse and you’ll be a horse girl. 

ZM: It’s never too late. It’s truly never too late.

DT: I feel like horses and I just have a contentious relationship and I’ve never been able to explain it. I like horses, but whenever I’m around one I feel like they’re judging me. It just doesn’t quite work out.

ZM: (laughs) Alright, well we definitely need to work on that. We can work that out for sure. We can get there. We’ll put a pin in that because I don’t want you to feel that way. They’re not judging you. Well, they might be. But we can work on that. Anyway, it was one of those magical things where you meet someone and you just feel like you’ve known them forever. I think Kaley and I are so similar in so many ways. We just got really lucky and had this immediate connection. We talked about everything. We just became really close and we had so much fun together. We were the bane of our 1st AD’s existence because we (a) kept wanting to improv scenes and (b) he would have to remind us that we were shooting a TV show and not just hanging out. 

I also think the fact that we went through shooting a show in this crazy year together and were the first show shooting back in New York was a big thing for all of us and bonded us a lot. Something else that Kaley and I talked about a lot was that we both came up and were really known for this one, specific comedic role. It’s funny, I think our industry is very quick to forget that we’re actors and that our job is to play people that we’re not? So you become known for a specific type of part, particularly if it’s a very loud or zany part. It’s very easy to get pigeonholed. Kaley took this huge leap making this show under such immense pressure. All eyes were on her and she slayed it and then some. I felt similarly, in that this was the first time I had gotten an opportunity to play a part that’s really, really different from what I got to do on Girls. I was given the opportunity to play a really dramatic side and really dry side. For the first time I feel like I got to play the straight man. It was the first time Kaley really got to show her acting chops from a dramatic standpoint. We really connected on the fear and excitement and experience of that. It was nice to have somebody to chat that through with.

DT: It’s fun to talk about the differences between Annie and Shoshanna, but I think both of them would be so horribly anxious during COVID. I think they’d both be going nuts for specific reasons. Who do you think would be struggling more during quarantine?

ZM: That’s a really good question. I feel like it would probably be Annie, even though it seems like she has her shit way more together. I think she’s way more of a control freak than Shosh. I feel like Shosh is such a doer that she’d be like ‘I’m going to figure out a new business model for hand sanitizers and become a billionaire CEO of my own company that I create during COVID.’ She’d be like ‘how do I buckle down and make this work for me?’ and I feel like Annie would be like ‘I’m a lion trapped in a cage in my apartment and I want to murder everyone.’ 

DT: I also feel like Shosh would be totally down to take a week to binge a TV show. I can’t picture Annie sitting down and enjoying television. 

ZM: No. Annie needs to be constantly conquering the world. I think Shoshanna would be like ‘maybe I should read the Great American Canon.’ Annie would, like, try and open Crime and Punishment, get fives pages in and be like ‘this book fucking sucks!’ and would then rearrange her apartment. Even though Shoshanna’s energy is way more bouncy and seems more frenetic, I think she actually knows how to handle herself better, whereas Annie is more of a ball of nerves.

[Zosia’s dog starts barking in the background]

ZM: That’s my dog. What are you barking at? There’s nothing there!

DT: What kind of dog?

ZM: She’s a mutt. Her name is Moose. I think both of my animals see dead people. Moose barks at nothing. Ten [Zosia’s horse] will often stare off into the sky and nothing’s there. I’m just like ‘cool, you see dead people.’ 

DT: You have haunted pets.

ZM: I have haunted pets. They for sure communicate with the dead. She’s barking at actually nothing outside. Moose is a rescue, she’s a mutt. We think that she’s a lab/hound/pit mix maybe? She’s like a shrunken great dane, if that makes sense. 

DT: It does make sense. You have a shrunken great dane who can see dead people. 

ZM: Yes, exactly!

SS: Is HBO Max interested in other pilots? Because I may have an idea.

[Zosia’s call drops, and then she returns]

ZM: Sorry!

DT: You know what just happened, right?

ZM: What?

DT: The ghosts in your house did not like the fact that you were talking about them.

ZM: Yeah. She was like ‘please stop.’ But yeah. Steve Yockey, our showrunner, became obsessed with Moose. It’s actually kind of terrifying, anytime there’s a camera around, Moose will start to pose like a model. She’ll put, like, one paw and leg out. The pilot might be worth pitching. 

DT: Zosia, congratulations on the show. It’s great and you’re excellent. It’s so fun to get to see you flex your acting muscles. You’re such a joy. Thanks for the time today. Tell Moose and Kaley we said hi.

ZM: I will! Thank you so much! Thank you for the wonderfully kind words. It was lovely and super fun chatting with you guys.