Amanda Seyfried Reveals Her Son’s Name Isn’t What Everyone Thinks! (Exclusive)

Amanda Seyfried and Nicholas Pinnock talked to “Extra’s” Mona Kosar Abdi about “Long Bright River,” their new suspense thriller series based on the Liz Moore bestseller. 

Amanda stars as Mickey, a Philly cop in a neighborhood hard-hit by the opioid crisis, who searches for her sister, an addict who has gone missing. Nicholas plays her police partner Truman.

Amanda reflected on telling a story about a community that’s marginalized, and talking about addiction in a way that’s human. 

She said after listening to the audio book she was “blown away,” explaining, “I was like this is a beautiful way to tell a story about a community that's just completely marginalized and talk about it in a way that's human and beautiful and gives such great insight into how these people got to where they are.”

Nicholas agreed that the show offers honesty, truth, and hope, and it wakes you up to the real struggles people experience. 

He said, “For me it was definitely a sense of community at the heart of everything… Liz has such a great, great way of creating this world that is fictional but about somewhere that’s real and the sense of community and honestly and trust and truth and hope that I read in the book was then translated into scripts, but then it was a complete adaptation as well.”

Pinnock added, “At the heart of it you have these people that really, really care and I think that's a lot of what's missing from today in our society.”

Amanda also spoke about relating to the mom guilt her character feels, revealing in the process that her own son’s name isn’t Thomas (which is her character’s son’s name), as has been widely reported! 

She explained, “Everybody thinks that my son’s name is Thomas… Somebody somewhere made up that his name was Thomas and I'm all for it but his name isn't Thomas. Isn't that funny?... I love that he has a secret name.”

As for how she could related to Mickey, Seyfried said, “I will say like I could really relate… Mickey is a little uncomfortable as a mom and you can feel that and you can feel her guilt and I know so well what that guilt is like when you're not around but you're kind of around and you're kind of trying to instill all this information and this support all at once.”

She said the guilt is “visceral at times,” adding, “That's a lot of people… We have to be more gentle on ourselves.”