While HBO’s “The Flight Attendant” and “Girls” are very different TV shows, actress Zosia Mamet has been able to connect her roles in both shows through their reflections of the human experience.
Mamet spoke about the roles during a phone interview on Friday for the release of the second season of “The Flight Attendant,” which debuts on the streaming service on April 21. Friday also happens to mark the 10-year anniversary of “Girls” — where Mamet had her breakout role alongside a cast of Lena Dunham, Allison Williams and Jemima Kirke — debuting its pilot episode.
“Obviously, they are such different shows, but mainly the thing I look for when I’m looking at jobs I want to do is that I want to be a storyteller because I think it makes people feel less alone,” she said. “At the core of telling stories, that’s always been a driving force behind them. It’s something that either helps us escape and helps us take our minds out of whatever is troubling us and at the same time we tell a story that someone can see themselves in or feel a connection to, and perhaps make them feel less lonely and comforted. In a big way that’s what ‘Girls’ did. We reflected a lot of people back to themselves and we just tried to make a really human show that we hoped was also really entertaining.”
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Mamet has brought this ethos to her character Annie, who the actress describes as “growing up and finding herself” in the second season of “The Flight Attendant.” Season one left off with Annie quitting her corporate lawyer job when she realized she’s not OK with her company’s practices.
“We leave her at the end of season one starting from scratch,” Mamet said. “She’s had a year off and I don’t think it’s helped her find her direction. We find her at the top of season two really uncomfortable because she’s not used to not having all of the answers or seeing the path forward. In a big way she feels like she’s lost her mojo, so I think her journey throughout season two is really finding herself again and figuring out what she wants her life to be.”
Mamet also explained her character’s dynamic with her best friend Cassie (played by Kaley Cuoco) and sort-of fiancé Max (played by Deniz Akdeniz) has changed, with her friendship with the former deepening as they’re going through their own personal struggles and her relationship with the latter being tested by Annie’s noncommittal nature.
“Max is such an exceptionally loving, supportive and patient man, and I think Annie finally finds his boundary,” she said. “I think there’s a big paradigm shift in their relationship in season two where she realizes she has to face her fear of commitment and being vulnerable and letting someone in. She has to give that up if she wants to keep Max.”
Mamet also noted she thinks viewers who were fans of season one will grow even fonder of the show with season two as it contains more thrills and is “funnier, wittier and sharper.”
She concluded that although “The Flight Attendant” is described as a “darkly comedic thriller,” she thinks the show’s human nature is what also resonates with fans, just like “Girls” did.
“’The Flight Attendant’ is a thriller in so many ways and there’s mystery, espionage and murder,” she said. “I also think at its heart, it’s also a deeply human show about how we are all flawed. We all struggle and no one is perfect. Relationships are hard, friendships are hard, being an adult is hard and addiction is exceptionally hard. Those are the types of stories that I want to be told and the types I want to tell. So, I think that was one of the biggest reasons that ‘Girls’ hit so hard, and I like to think it’s another reason why people love ‘The Flight Attendant’ so much as well.”
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