“And I was like, ‘That’s a great idea, Cat Cohen.’ And so we pitched it to Lemonada, and they loved it.”
The rest is, as surely someone would say, history.
On OMG Obsessed, Mamet invites one guest per episode to talk about their persistent, extremely specific fixations—as in, the deep group chat material, the things that live rent-free in their heads, the “oh no, the algorithm knows too much” stuff. It’s a chance for guests like Jeff Hiller, Esther Povitsky, Kaia Gerber, and more to tell the world about what lives in the dusty corners of their brains. (Povitsky introduced Mamet to the idea of fridgescaping, a hobby that Mamet says she will “absolutely not” be taking up after it “shook me to my core.”) The guest is also invited to give a timed one-minute elevator pitch to convince the audience to sign onto their obsession, a highlight of the episodes.
Mamet is currently holed up in Wales, where she is filming a role on the final season of the show Industry, and has recently discovered the joys of duck eggs, purple sweet potatoes, and cooking in an air fryer. “I was like, I get it, I understand why people like this so much,” she says. Here’s where that Shosh-like vibe comes in: in the pure enthusiasm she exudes when talking about things she loves, like getting around Wales by bike, another giddy monologue.
“I revert back to like seven, eight years old every time I sit on a bike, and I can’t help but just go, like, ‘Whee,’” she says. “Just, like, feeling the wind in my hair. I have a little basket on the front. I don’t have a bell because I had one and it broke, and it’s very unclear what the rules are with pedestrians and the right of way and the wrong side of the road. I need a bell. A bell is a necessary purchase because I almost ran over some people the other day. I actually started going ding ding, but nobody heeded my warning.”
One thing she has not learned about while working on Industry is stocks or any financial terms. “Some of the scripts, I read them and I’m just over here googling at the same time, being like, What is that?” She also can’t tell you how the final season’s arc will play out, “even if I wanted to.” She doesn’t know.
Mamet says that she loves hearing fans talk about revisiting Girls, with many rewatching it with younger generations. She hasn’t watched the show since it aired, not out of cringe but because it was such a special process. She also hasn’t read Girls costar and showrunner (and future OMG Obsessed guest, if Mamet has her way) Lena Dunham’s new memoir, Famesick, yet.
“I don’t know if I’m ready,” she admits. “I think that time is so canonized in my memory as something so precious and of that moment. Not that I don’t want to read Lena’s writing, but I just don’t feel ready to open that box yet. It’s so special to me that I just need to leave it there for a little while longer, I think.”
