Zosia Mamet Quit Big TV Show After Horrible Experience with Showrunner

In an excerpt from her new collection of essays, Does This Make Me Funny?, which was shared by The Hollywood Reporter on Monday, the actress detailed how a horrible experience with a showrunner of a popular series resulted in her immediate exit, recalling an incident in which the unnnamed showrunner went off on her during rehearsal, claiming he was “full-out screaming” and hurling expletive-filled insults at her.

Mamet, now 37, recalled how at 19 she nabbed a recurring role on “one of the biggest shows currently on television,” saying that on her first day on the job, the showrunner’s assistant demanded her waist-length hair be chopped into a bob, with her hair being “frantically” cut with a straight razor.” Despite the “traumatizing” experience, she said she had a “blast” on her first day, and went on to shoot a “couple more episodes of the show that season.”

Mamet said she was “over the moon” when she was asked to return for the following season, but on her first day back, she faced something completely unexpected.

The Girls actress — who described the series creator and showrunner as an “intense human” — said the showrunner was on set for a blocking rehearsal, writing that “the entire vibe of the set would change” when he was around.

“He was definitely spirited and opinionated, but there’s way worse than that in Hollywood. I had always thought there was maybe something I was missing. I was correct,” Mamet said.

“We were doing a blocking rehearsal when he showed up on set. The scene was short and easy. I was meant to come into the office, tell everyone I had photos of something important, remove them from the manila envelope I was carrying, and place them on the table. Then everyone had a few more lines and that was it,” she continued. “So we’re rehearsing, I walk in, I go to take the photos out of the envelope, and the showrunner calls ‘Cut.’ Not the director of the episode, the showrunner. And we all look at each other like, Did somebody do something wrong? We all thought the scene was going fine.”

“He gets up out of his chair at the monitors and walks toward me slowly, looking at the ground the entire time like he’s trying to figure out how to word what he’s about to say. And when he finally stops right in front of me, he takes a few more beats before he lifts his head, looks at me, and says, ‘What the f–k are you doing?’ To which I say, ‘Um…rehearsing?'”

Mamet claimed the showrunner then grabbed her hand that was holding the envelope, and yelled, “No! What the f–k are you doing with this! That’s not how you take something out of an envelope! Do it again!”

According to the actress, she did the scene “again, and again, and again,” but when they would reach the part of the scene where she had to take the photos out of the manila envelope, the showrunner would go off.

“Well, first, he starts off just raising his voice, which escalates to yelling, which eventually mutates into full‑out screaming,” Mamet recalled, adding that the showrunner “spew[ed] the kitchen sink” at her, before listing the alleged insults that included: “How the f–k can you think that looks right at all?” “I’m honestly confused at how you can be so bad at this.” “Did you forget how to act, Mamet?”

Mamet wrote that the showrunner “eventually gave up or got bored,” but said the incident went on for about 30 minutes.

“Nobody stopped it. Everyone just stared at their shoes while he screamed at me. Eventually we finished the blocking rehearsal and shot the scene,” she said.

Mamet recalled how she immediately realized she was done with the show following the incident.

“I finished my day. I walked to my car and called my agents and told them I quit,” she said. “I was supposed to do four more episodes that season, not including the one I was on, but I told them I didn’t care what they had to do, I didn’t care if the network sued me, I refused to go back on that set for one more day than I actually had to. I don’t remember anything else about the rest of that shoot. I think I’ve blocked it out.”

Despite the alleged encounter with the showrunner, Mamet called the unnamed series “an incredible piece of television,” admitting that she felt “insanely honored to have been a part of it.” She said the show “went on to break records for awards and ratings” following her exit.

She went on to recall how she ran into the showrunner “a few years later” at the Emmys.

“He pretended not to know who I was. They swept the awards that night and part of me resented him for that. But you know, he hasn’t really made anything since,” Mamet said.

Mamet did not name the television series or showrunner. However, due to the age she provided, and other clues, many have speculated that she was referring to her time on Mad Men, in which she appeared in five episodes — four in Season 4, and one in Season 5. In Mamet’s final episode, Season 5 Episode 4, titled “Mystery Date,” Mamet’s Joyce Ramsay takes out a photo from a manila envelope.

She also appeared on Parenthood and United States of Tara around the same time, before landing Girls shortly after.