Shoshanna Forever: Zosia Mamet on the Magic of Making ‘Girls’

My mother once told me a story about falling through the ice when she was skating as a child on a pond that hadn’t properly frozen over. She said when she took her jeans off they stood up on their own because they were so completely frozen through.

That is how Shoshanna feels to me—like a pair of frozen jeans, a material that should not, but in this rare instance does, stand up completely on its own.

I like to joke that she came to being like Aphrodite, emerging fully formed from a seashell out of the ocean. When I made my audition tape, I did not prep beyond learning my lines. I ran those four pages over and over and over again until I could say them upside down and sideways and probably backwards, if put to the test. And then when I went to record my tape, I did a single take of the scene.

Sometimes when I’m really in the moment, it feels similar to how I’ve heard people describe rage blackouts. You remember the moment before and the moment you come to, but everything in the middle is a black void of nothingness. That’s what it was like: as if I, Zosia, went offline to make space for Shosh to take over for that period of time. She came out of me as if she had been a part of me forever, lying dormant, just waiting for the time to arrive when she could come alive. Like a ghost possessing my body. I just had to open myself up to her and she was right there.

I always feel for the characters I’m playing; I imagine every actor does. But normally I do not feel things as the character when I’m simply reading their lines on the page. My characters are usually separate from me, third-party entities that exist in a play world.

Except for Shosh. She was both a part of me and a person outside of me that existed on her own, whom I loved and had a relationship with. When she broke up with Ray I wanted to show up at her apartment with wine and takeout and hugs. When she lost her virginity I wanted to take her out to celebrate. When she sounded off at the beach house I wanted to call her and tell her I was proud of her. I wanted to visit her in Japan. I wanted to congratulate her on her engagement. Every experience she had felt wholly and utterly real to me.