Amy Seimetz never completely turns off her directing mind while acting. “My goal as an actor is always to never quit the TV show,” she says with a laugh. “There’s a lot of things that are really useful, for me, in live delivery, which is more technical in terms of filmmaking: What are you going to go to next? Where are you going to play this? Is this a close-up? Wide? How do you edit this?” This approach has nothing to do with maximizing screen time or replacing their actual director, but rather modulates their performance within a broader context. “These questions might seem like I’m overstepping my bounds, but actually I realize as an actor, ‘Oh, if I look here, they can access this to help them in some capacity.’
This produces rich rewards CovenantsHulu’s upcoming sequel series set 15 years after the end of the film The Handmaid’s Tale (premieres April 8), featuring Ann Dowd reprising her Emmy Award-winning role as Aunt Lydia. Seimetz portrays Paula, the obsessive mother who reluctantly raises Agnes (Chase Infinity), a Gilead name for Hannah, her father’s now teenage daughter. maid The protagonist is June (Elisabeth Moss). With majestic, sometimes comic intensity, Seimetz captures the fears of a woman on the verge of collapse when life seems out of order—even if the plate is misplaced.
“She wants everything beautiful, she wants everything perfect — and anything that’s out of place, that’s where my eye goes,” she says. “It’s very rare that I get the chance to play someone who’s kind of bad. But I didn’t want to choose the archetype of the villain.”
This performance should bring some attention to Seimetz, a reminder of the insight she brought to projects including the acclaimed film. Color source And her own directing project, Girlfriend experience. She’s already eligible for an honor at the upcoming SeriesMania. The indie actress, whose directing and acting career steadily grew in the 2000s, has been keeping a low profile for the past few years. Part of this has to do with a shift in priorities – “It’s very rare that I act these days,” she says – and part of it has to do with the larger rapid shifts in the industry, and the long-term nature of getting anything done on the ground right now. And of course, there was the surrounding madness idol — the HBO series co-created by Sam Levinson, Reza Fahim, and Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye that Seimetz directed nearly an entire season from, only for her version to be shockingly canceled in the end for an entirely new take (more on that soon).
So why was it? Covenants The project to lead to her biggest acting role — and presumably on the press circuit — in years? In fact, I even went so far as to audition. “It should be like I’m saying, ‘I don’t know if I can do this, maybe this isn’t in my wheelhouse’ — if I look at it and say, ‘I’ve never done this before, I know I want to try,’” she says. “They all feed into each other in a way — directing, writing, acting. When I get tired of being bossy, I want people to tell me when to hit a target and what to say. When I get tired of being told where to hit a target and what to say, I want to be bossy again.”
Seimetz came to the project a huge fan of Margaret Atwood — the show is based on Atwood’s novel of the same name, which was written during The Handmaid’s Tale‘s It’s on Hulu and builds on the events of the original series as much as it does its original book — and has connections to Infinity, its main star. “My very good friend is Sarah Murphy, so we had mutual friends — and it was easy to get into,” she says, referring to the Oscar-winning producer of the film. Battle after battlewhich featured Infiniti’s premium role.
Seimetz’s icy chemistry with Infinity is surprisingly immediate and light, reflective of the show as a whole despite the heavy themes. “I wouldn’t say I was in it for comedy, although Chase would probably argue I was,” Seimetz says. “But the idea of allowing this to be devilishly funny in a very dark world — so close to reality — drove me so hard to make it that way, because I knew my character was being told through the lens of Chase’s character.”
“I’ll try to push as far as I can, and then trust the director to pull me back a little bit,” Seimetz adds.
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Three years ago, Seimetz was traveling around New Zealand’s South Island with a friend, on a break from filming her latest acting role in a Netflix series. Sweet toothWhen she received a call from her publicist: Rolling Stone He was asking for comment on “whatever mess they were writing about.” idol. Signal lost. She asked her friend if they should go back or continue their off-the-grid adventure. “I thought, ‘No, I want to do what we planned and go snorkeling with dolphins — and by the way, that was the best decision I ever made,’” Seimetz says.
She brought this up first to reiterate that she still had no comment on what happened on that set or what happened to the show — which was derided by critics — once she was replaced (Levinson directed the final product). Rolling Stone She stated that Seimetz was “willing to fail” and that she walked out on a “ridiculous show.”
“It’s not helpful for me to dwell on it, and it’s not really helpful for me to comment on it,” Seimetz says. “If anything, it’s great that I don’t feel the need to — and I really don’t.” She pauses, then ties it up idol Odyssey to the biggest project she’s done since: “The best I can say is maid Quote: “Don’t let bastards crush you.” I’m only half kidding.
Was Seimetz frustrated, though, coming out of an experience that we can at least describe as less than ideal? “It didn’t really matter how I felt,” she said twice. “This is Hollywood. [Steven] In fact, Soderbergh said this to me: “You’re not a real film director until you have that notch on your belt and keep moving forward.” For the record, Seimetz looks back fondly idol That I made, even though it will never see the light of day. “I really liked what I was doing, and they ended up making the show they wanted to make, but that’s just the way it goes,” she says. “I loved working with Lily [Rose Depp]. I think it’s great. At least with the work we’ve been doing together, she’s a next-level comedic genius — I don’t know if people know that.
Behind the scenes, Seimetz has been going strong, directing multiple episodes of the popular series Mr. and Mrs. Smith Adaptation series out of the gate. She now has several high-profile projects under her belt as a writer and director, and she’s reasonably confident that she’ll move forward — even if it takes years. She also periodically films a hybrid documentary with one of her best friends, Jillian Meyer, in Florida. “Jillian is from Miami and I’m from Tampa, so when I get home, I drive around and reshoot these little bits of it,” she says. I echoed the dynamic of making You die tomorrowthe 2020 electric horror-thriller from Seimetz.
“I really fell in love with the process, which is: Start with some ideas, and you don’t necessarily need to know where they’re going,” Seimetz says. “Once I realized I didn’t have to wait for a big project to come along or for anyone to tell me I could direct something… I went ahead and bought cameras, and now I shoot parts of things.”
I learned how to navigate a rapidly changing industry through the example of Soderbergh, who first asked Seimetz to turn his Girlfriend experience On the series a little over a decade ago – although they had never spoken before. “He’s very smart about the changing landscape… He really saw an opportunity when television was starting to die out: He went to Starz and asked, ‘What’s the number where you’re going to do a TV show and leave us alone?'” Seimetz says. “They gave him a number, and it was very low, and then we nailed it.” The first season starred Riley Keough in a breakout role and received widespread critical acclaim, and it went on to run two more seasons in an anthology format.
20]“I’ve tried that tactic again on multiple things,” Seimetz says now of how Soderbergh pushed his auteur-driven drama. “But it’s just a forever changing landscape.” However, she sees back Soderbergh’s prolific body of work over the past five years – even though many feel it’s harder than ever to get anything done – and draws inspiration from his agility. “Everyone is afraid of making things,” she says before rephrasing it: “I’m going to figure out a way I can make a bunch of these things.”
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After taking on her first regular TV role since the pandemic, Seimetz ended up away from her Toronto home for a full six months last year, reflecting her intense time on the job Girlfriend experience In Canada a decade ago. The main difference is that here she was playing a supporting role in the fabric of the expanded storytelling. Didn’t go Covenants Either – “I’m not really able to participate in the performance while directing; I know that about myself enough to say ‘No, thank you'” – and so she had many days to herself.
“It’s like contemplating being in that person, because you’ll have breaks and you’re like, ‘What is this person going to do?’” Seimetz says. “And I can’t say I relate to Paula.”
However, as connected to Atwood as she is, she speaks of the auteur as being in sync with her own philosophy of filmmaking and storytelling. “Under these dire circumstances, yes, there are heroes, and yes, there are persecuted people, but it allows the emotions to be really messy,” Seimetz says. “It allows the heroes to make mistakes and gets into the psychology and decision-making of what happens under those circumstances. And it plays into this world of gothic darkness with a wicked sense of humor.”
Seimetz then turns to how to do it Covenants Came First: Atwood seized the opportunity, expanding on her groundbreaking book Just Like maid The adaptation has reached a high degree of popularity. Seimetz clearly admires artists’ ability to find their moment. “She’s another character who is very adaptable to the way the world works,” she says. Seimetz can count herself among that group as well.
