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Minor spoilers below.
In a scene early in season 2 ofYour Friends & Neighbors, I noticed something on Amanda Peet I hadn't seen on television in ages: dynamic glabellar lines. Exes Mel (Amanda Peet) and Coop (Jon Hamm) sit on the stairs of her Westchester mansion and reminisce about bringing their first baby home from the hospital—a girl who is now a defiant high school senior about to leave and turn Mel into "some lonely old hag living in a big empty house." Yes, these characters are rich, gorgeous, and prone to terrible decision-making, but Peet's egoless performance (including those believable frown lines) makes the moment genuinely moving.
Freshly single and fired from her psychologist job, Mel has a lot to furrow her brow about in the new season of the Apple TV hit, going through a wild ride of menopause symptoms, teen-daughter drama, and a feud with neighbors whose dog is leaving literal shit on her lawn. The metaphors are not subtle, but Peet always feels grounded. If season 1 ofYour Friends & Neighborsfelt at times like fantasy fulfillment for middle-aged men—as financier Coop bottoms out and finds new life as a gentleman thief—season 2 asks what a messy midlife spiral might look like for a woman.
Numerous female writers, directors, and producers have joined the show this season, but Peet primarily credits show creator and executive producer Jonathan Tropper for guiding Mel's menopause storyline. "I just couldn't be more grateful to Tropper for having the guts and the wherewithal and the skill to bring an angry middle-aged woman to the table," she says. She plays another complicated woman in her new filmFantasy Life, for which she won a special jury award at the 2025 SXSW festival; the indie opens today, the same dayYour Friends & Neighborsdrops its season 2 premiere.
The actress, 54, who shared her breast cancer diagnosis inaNew Yorkeressaythe day after we spoke, joined our video call with an unmade face and undone hair from her couch in Los Angeles, confessing that all things considered, she might rather be in chilly New York. In conversation, Peet is unpretentious and dryly funny—the kind of person you find yourself oversharing with five minutes after you've met. Below, she talks about the pleasures of playing an angry woman and how her own experiences informed Mel's storyline.
Your Friends & Neighborssurprised me with the tone of this season—there was the thieving, moneyed suburbs, and satire, but it was also emotional and honest about how hard it is to get older. Were you surprised by Mel's menopause journey?
When I saw the scripts, I was like, "Yeah, of course." I mean, what else is there to obsess about? And Jonathan Tropper has a deep interest and a good take on it. He was talking about the movie with Michael Douglas where everything goes wrong,Falling Down. It's like a white man, middle-aged, midlife crisis, a kind of briefcase Joe who goes off the rails. I had never seen it, but he said how that inspired him in terms of menopause: When we're not in a good place, we as people tend to feel more like a victim. We feel like someone's taking advantage of us; that kind of paranoia about neighbors. So as soon as he said Michael Douglas inFalling Down, I was like, "Oh my God, I'm in." I was salivating.
Is there a moment for Mel that was the most fun for you to play this season?
I'm always asking for more pratfalls. I think he's going to probably start putting them in as a joke. And I'm old as shit, so it's actually really dangerous for me to do pratfalls sometimes. I have a frozen shoulder and surgery for my torn labrum on my hip, and I'm just a mess. So everyone holds their breath, just being like, "Amanda, maybe you should let your stunt double do this one." And I'm like, "Let me just try." I also like how much she drinks. Playing drunk is always very fun and challenging as an actor.
How do you approach that?
Oftentimes with a shot of tequila.
Method, I see.
"Ever heard of acting, my dear boy?" But no, I mean, it's something that in your twenties, you always want to do a scene where you're drunk, so you can do that sensory recall and try to be really good. So that's really fun. And I love my stuff with Jon Hamm, obviously. He's the perfect combination of caring about it and also having a good perspective about it.
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I'm not going to spoil our readers too much, but there is a funny scene late in the season where Mel realizes menopause is not as taboo a topic as she thinks. But I do think it's true you don't see this part of life portrayed that often in film and TV in such a frank way.
There wasAll Fours—although to me, with Miranda July, it's like, "Aren't you like 39? Are you really in menopause?"—and then Naomi Watts. So I feel like it's starting to move into the zeitgeist, but I was still really excited to do my angry Michael Douglas version of it.
Is this something that you and your friends talk about?
Yeah, nonstop. It's hard. The emotional dysregulation is part of it, and it's hard to decide what is menopause and what is the thing where you name something and it becomes true. My husband always tells me that I've been blaming everything on menopause or perimenopause for two decades. As soon as I had [my son] Henry, I was like, "I left the room a mess. I forgot something. I have foggy brain." Really? You're 43 and all of a sudden you are in perimenopause? Okay.
So much of what Mel is going through is also about being the mother of teenagers, which is not for the faint of heart. Did you bring your experience to it?
For sure. We went through the college thing the year before, so I didn't have to tap into it. It was just right there. It's very real, losing your looks coupled with losing a daughter to college. Maybe there's sort of a combination of launching your daughter, but then wishing you could do it again, but better. And all of this is kind of a mishmash of emotions that are probably not good for any teen girl to deal with.
It's quite a brew, but there's also so much joy to it. Was it important to you to show the pleasures of parenting, too?
I think so. It's such an important part of the story because it's what's at stake for [Coop]. If he's caught, if he's found out...I mean, I love that Tropper made his lovely wife someone who keys cars and transgresses in so many different ways, but I think that that conceit has to still be there, that this is the family he wants to get back to, and this is what's at stake for him.
There's a risk in a show that's a sort ofSkyler White syndrome, where people see the wife as the nagging impediment to the anti-hero. Were you guys aware of that risk when crafting Mel to be more complicated—not just a drag?
Yes. When Tropper pitched it to me, he promised me that it wouldn't be the wife role where you're like, "Bye, honey." And there are a lot of scenes of packing lunches and you're like, "Have a good day!" and then everybody else goes off to perform the plot of the show. He was true to his word and did, I think, also want to make her, like you just said, not kind of a lovely wife role or a naggy wife role, which I have played many, many times. And it's just not that interesting.
One of the triumphs of Mel is that she is angry and doing ill-advised things the whole season, but you are still rooting for her…
I, at least, was. To me, she's understandable. And, while I know women characters don't have to be likable, I'm curious if you find her likable?
I do. And I think if you portray menopause well—and Jonathan Tropper did—hopefully you see what's underneath the rage and what's causing it.
She says about the neighbors she's feuding with, "They made me feel like nothing." I thought that was so key to what she's going through the whole season.
We talked about that line a lot. I find it very moving, and I find that there's so many layers to that idea of being unseen. You're losing your looks. Nobody's looking at you anymore. You're hitting that age where it's a new, rude awakening every day—either looks-wise or pain-wise. And then if you stopped work to become a mother and your kids are leaving, now what? Even if you lamented the fact that all you were doing was making lunches and doing pickups and drop-offs and being a soccer mom. I really feel that.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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