Losing her chance at a million dollars because of a Lego? Dropping out of an HBO series? Squeezed
out by a younger star? These are the reasons why Amanda Peet has disappeared from Hollywood.
In 2021, Netflix dropped The Chair,
a miniseries based on a fictional university's newly appointed English department chair.
"Our first lady chair."
"Woman. I'm not going to sugarcoat this. We're in dire crisis"
The show scored an impressive 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, with USA Today describing it as
"a darkly funny satire, skewering aspects of modern higher education with veritable glee."
While the likes of Sandra Oh and Jay Duplass took center stage,
another actor was able to take credit for the whole concept. Yes, Amanda Peet served as writer,
producer, and co-creator of the dramedy, working alongside Annie Julia Wyman — a
Cambridge and Harvard academic — to ensure all the educational talk was as authentic as possible.
When asked by The Guardian what the inspiration for the show was, Peet replied,
"I loved this idea of having young idealists, then people whose idealism had softened,
then older folks who … are now just seen as part of the … white
patriarchy. I thought that could be rich territory for a workplace comedy."
"We're still in our intellectual prime and have plenty to offer!"
The Chair might have been Amanda Peet's first effort as a TV showrunner,
but she'd already had plenty of experience writing for the stage. In 2013, she penned
The Commons of Pensacola — an off-Broadway play starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Blythe Danner.
Five years later, Peet once again proved she was a multi-talent
writing the Geffen Playhouse production, Our Very Own Carlin McCullough.
The story follows a prodigious tennis player who gets stuck in the middle of her warring mother and
coach. She was inspired by both the relationship she had with a camp counselor as a teenager
and the court skills of her nephew and niece. Peet told Backstage that working behind the scenes
has given her a new outlook on her day job. "Maybe I'm a little less precious. I've been lucky
enough to find a job elsewhere, so if I suck at something as an actor, I can always try writing.
On the other hand, I've chosen something that's equally cutthroat!"
In 2021, Amanda Peet put her reputation as one of Hollywood's most intelligent actors
on the line when she braved the hot seat on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Luckily,
the Trust Me star acquitted herself well. Peet, who was later joined on the show by her
"surrogate husband" D.B. Weiss, made it all the way to $32,000 before needing her first lifeline.
She then successfully used both Phone A Friend and Ask the Guest before she was stuck on the $250,000
question. Even with the help of 50/50, the actor decided against taking a punt on answering,
"In The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, Emmet teams up with Rex Dangervest, the tough-guy
captain of what time-traveling spaceship?" The Dirty John star admitted that, although her
son had seen the film, she had no idea who Emmet was. So she walked away with a cool $125,000 for
her chosen charity, Big Sunday — a Los Angeles organization that provides support for numerous
local charities. And if you're wondering what the answer was, it's The Rexcelsior!
Amanda Peet may not have appeared on the big screen since 2015's Sleeping with Other People,
but she's been much more visible on the small one. She took leading roles in Brockmire and
Togetherness, had a recurring stint on The Good Wife, and guested on The Romanoffs.
While those parts were memorable in their own right, her most impressive latter-day
performance has undoubtedly been in the second season of Dirty John.
Peet played Betty Broderick in the true crime adaptation — the real-life
woman sentenced to at least 32 years in prison after killing both her ex-husband
Daniel and his wife Linda in 1989. In a chat with Forbes,
the New Yorker said she believed she was stepping into the shoes of a clear sociopath:
"She murdered the father of her children so you have to have those tendencies in order to do that.
What scared me was that she had no remorse for the murders,
or at least claims not to have any. That definitely scared me."
However, Peet was also glad that the show didn't present Broderick as a one-dimensional villain:
"[Showrunner Alexandra Cunningham] wanted to explore the ways in which Betty was not crazy,
to actually bring to the foreground the ways in which she actually
stayed sane for a while in the face of horrendous adversity and humiliation."
Amanda Peet first became a mother when she was more of a regular big screen presence.
She gave birth to daughter Frances Pen in 2007 — the same year she voiced Maria in Battle for
Terra, played Harlee in Martian Child, and wrapped up the first and final season
of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Her second child, Molly June, followed three years later.
And the arrival of her son Henry in 2014 made her family unit complete.
The father of Peet's three kids is David Benioff, the director, writer, and producer
best known for his work on the TV adaptation of George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones.
Peet and Benioff began dating in 2002 before tying the knot four years later at her alma mater,
the Quaker Friends Seminary School. The pair have largely avoided mixing business with pleasure,
but Benioff did contribute as a writer and executive producer on The Chair.
Channing Tatum, Hilary Duff, and Kelly Clarkson are just a few of the celebrities
who have made the jump to children's books over the years. And Amanda Peet added her
name to that list in 2015 with a picture book titled, Dear Santa, Love Rachel Rosenstein.
Co-written with one of Peet's best friends, Andrea Troyer, the story follows the titular Jewish
character on a mission to bring Father Christmas to her home without her parents' knowledge.
But after trying to track down the man whose belly shakes like a bowlful of
jelly at the mall and writing to him at the North Pole without much luck,
the youngster begins to recognize how special her own traditions are.
Peet was inspired by her kids Molly and Frankie and their queries about the lack of Christmas
trees, cookies, and lights in their own household, as she explained in a Doubleday Books statement.
"Why can't we have a tree? Why can't we have Santa?"
She explained that, "The book came out of a
desire to capture the feeling of being left out during the Christmas holidays and to explain
how you can't always get what you want." Further embracing the season of goodwill,
Peet donated a percentage of the book's proceeds to the nonprofit Seeds of Peace.
Amanda Peet looked all set to take a rare detour into period drama
when she was cast as Bertha Russell, a late 19th century middle-class New Yorker who tries
to ingratiate herself into the social elite via her business genius husband in The Gilded Age.
Unfortunately, like many shows during the early stages of the pandemic,
filming of the HBO series hit scheduling problems. As a result, a busy Peet had no
option but to drop out of the latest series from Downton Abbey scribe Julian Fellowes.
That’s why you now see Carrie Coon wearing the finest vintage French couture as Russell instead.
Amanda Peet still attends the occasional premiere. She joined her showrunner husband
David Benioff at a screening of Game of Thrones, for example. And she posed for
photos at the Westwood Village Theater to help promote the Amy Schumer comedy, I Feel Pretty.
In 2020, Peet and her BFF, American Horror Story regular Sarah Paulson, were asked by InStyle
whether they missed stepping out of a limousine and posing for a cavalcade of photographers.
While Paulson admitted she enjoys playing dress-up for the occasion,
Peet was less enthusiastic. "The red carpet can still be
intimidating, but it's just not as important to us as it used to be."
Even when Peet does make the effort, she's not always credited for doing so.
"About a year ago I got out of the car in full hair and makeup, and as I took my fancy red-carpet
stance, people yelled, 'Lake Bell! Lake, over here!' Part of me was really excited because
she's so hot. But then I was like, 'Wow, I feel bad for her that this is happening to me.'"
Amanda Peet's early career is littered with forgettable films like Body Shots, Whipped,
and Simply Irresistible. But now that she's decided to take much more creative control
over her career, the actor can afford to be a little choosier with her roles.
"When my alarm goes off at 5:20 in the morning, [I ask myself],
'Are these the words that I want to be saying? And is this the story that I want to be telling?"
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times in 2020, Peet admitted to some regrets about her resume.
"I also feel like I wouldn't have done some of the lousy stuff that I did because
I would have realized that there were other resources at my disposal.
I didn't have to play that wife role or that role in the unnameable movie that I won't name.
I could have been writing instead of doing that. I think there was a period of time in
my 20s where I was definitely chasing the hype instead of doing my work."
As well as revealing her aversion to plastic surgery in a candid letter she penned for Lenny,
Peet also admitted to feeling like she's fallen several rungs down the Hollywood ladder as she's
gotten older. And there's one particular star who the actor believes she's been pushed down by.
Yes, after disclosing that she recently lost out on a role because she wasn't current enough,
Peet mentioned Academy Award-winner Alicia Vikander as someone who very much is.
"She is squeezing me out. She's in the hot center and I'm on the remote perimeter."
Peet then used another analogy to describe the gulf between herself and the Tomb Raider star:
"The train has left the station and I'm one of those moronic stragglers running alongside …
Everyone's looking at me like, 'Let go, you bullheaded old hag! There's no room for you.'"
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