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NEW YORK, March 13 (UPI) -- Mamma Mia! and Mean Girls actress Amanda Seyfried says there were two major reasons why she wanted to star in Peacock's adaptation of Liz Moore's best-selling novel Long Bright River -- the location and the fact it cast her against type. "Philly," the 39-year-old Pennsylvania native told UPI when asked in a recent Zoom interview what initially drew her to the project.
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"I really always wanted to play a cop and bringing it kind of home for me to Philly was really attractive," Seyfried said.
"I listened to the book and I thought: 'Wow, there isn't a more grounded account or exploration of the opioid epidemic in Kensington,' a marginalized community. There isn't a clearer, more human picture of that and I thought that was really smart, and I was like, 'I can't believe someone wants to make this because it's all too real.'"
Premiering Thursday, the eight-episode mystery follows Mickey (Seyfried), an empathetic Philadelphia cop and single mother, who enlists the help of her former partner Truman (Nicholas Pinnock) to look for her missing drug-addict sister Casey (Ashleigh Cummings).
"It gets a lot of information across in a really fun way, in a really interesting way," Seyfried said.
"At the end of the day, it's essential that we understand each other in ways that the media doesn't allow us to and, so, we're looking at Kensington. We are looking at the unhoused community. We are looking at the sex-worker community. We're looking at the the addicts and we're trying to tell a different story."
Pinnock, 51, said he was a huge fan of the novel that inspired the series.
"The book was fantastic and then [I liked] seeing how Nikki Toscano and Miss Moore had adapted It for television," the actor said.
"A lot of adaptations aren't done very well," he added. "This one was done perfectly and you could leave the book behind, but still have really strong connections to it and have it told in a medium that was really different and far more challenging in some ways."
Pinnock -- who is known for his roles For Life and Counterpart -- said the character of Truman and central story-line of Long Bright River actually scared him.
"I didn't know how I was going to bring him to life and whether I was the right person, whether I could actually do what was required to pay respect to Liz's book and to what Nikki and Liz had conjured up for the screen," he said.
"What we see in the media about communities like this -- and naming this one, Kensington -- is so one-sided and to be able to strip all of those things away and focus on the humanity and the community aspect of it was really, really important. I was sold."
In Seyfried's opinion, Truman is a much better police officer than Mickey is.
"Her priorities are all out of whack once the investigation starts going," the actress said.
Pinnock said Truman sees potential in the rookie cop he's training.
"He sees something of himself In her, which is why there was a mentorship going on and he believes that she's a good person," he added.
"There is an aspect of Truman that doesn't think a lot of good people are still around, that there aren't a lot of good people in the police force, that there aren't a lot of good people left in the community," Pinnock said.
"When he meets Mickey, he understands that she's one of those good people and he wants to nurture it, so that element of it is really what brings them together and keeps them together against all odds."
Although Mickey's family is why she decided to become a cop in the first place, they also make it difficult for her to play by the rules.
"Her family was on the force and it just ends up that's what you do you," Seyfried said, implying Mickey wasn't necessarily cut out for a career in law-enforcement.
"It makes it a lot harder to do her job and focus on her job because she partly is still on the force because she wants to look out for her sister and the community and she has a soft spot, thank God, unlike a lot of cops, for the unhoused community and for the addicts in the community and the sex workers because her sister is -- spoiler -- all of those things."
The horrors Mickey sees are personal because she can imagine them happening to the sister she loves, the actress added.
"Everything just hits home more. It's terrifying to go to work everyday as a cop, probably, without knowing that your loved ones live within the community that's hit so hard," Seyfried said.
"It makes her job that much harder and she's got a kid at home, so just imagine balancing all that. There are a lot of people like our characters and that's why it was important to portray them."
