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Amanda Peet is pulling back the threadbare curtain on life underneath the spotlight.
The 54-year-old actress called out Hollywood as nothing but “smoke and mirrors.”
“It’s ridiculous,” Peet told Digital when asked about the “biggest misconception” of stars having a “perfect life” in Hollywood. “It’s smoke and mirrors. There’s no there there. I mean you name the aphorism, it applies to us. It’s desperation galore. ‘What are they doing over there? Why don’t I have that? Why don’t I look like that?’ That’s the bad part.”
She continued, “In Hollywood, it’s hard to — I’m gonna just sound corny. It’s competitive, and it’s hard to get out of that really sort of competitive mindset where the piece of cheese on the island is too small and there are too many people going after it.”
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Amanda Peet says Hollywood is “desperation galore.” ( Jamie McCarthy/WireImage)
The “Something’s Gotta Give” actress added that aging in the youth-obsessed industry isn’t easy either.
“I’m older, so I have much more peace about it, but it’s really, really hard to find that, and it is hard not to want to chase your own buzz if you are lucky enough to have any, and instead, just be like, ‘What do I really want to do when my alarm goes off in the morning? What do I want to be doing? Is this really what I want to be doing? Is this really helpful or useful to anyone?’”
WATCH: Amanda Peet calls Hollywood glamour ‘ridiculous’ and ‘smoke and mirrors’
Peet is starring in the second season of Apple TV’s “Your Friends & Neighbors,” which premieres on Friday, April 3 with one new episode each week through June 5.
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She said that fans can expect a “lot more” from season two.
“Then also there’s the issue of Coop having this secret life,” Peet said of Jon Hamm’s character who plays her ex-husband on the show.
“It’s smoke and mirrors. There’s no there there. I mean you name the aphorism, it applies to us. It’s desperation galore. ‘What are they doing over there? Why don’t I have that? Why don’t I look like that?’ That’s the bad part.”
“And I think this season, one too many people are starting to get an inkling that something’s going on with Coop,” she continued. “And so it gets more and more dangerous for him to keep doing what he’s doing, which is incredibly exciting. And then [her character] Mel and Coop are still in this kind of like, will they, won’t they? They’re so pissed off at each other, but they still seem to wanna f— each other. So yeah, it’s just really a whole big hot mess.”
Jon Hamm and Amanda Peet at a “Your Friends and Neighbors” press event last year. (Eric Charbonneau/Apple TV+ via Getty Images)
WATCH: Amanda Peet reveals fans can expect a ‘lot more’ from season 2 of ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’
Peet said she also appreciated a storyline where her character deals with going into menopause, which she said was cathartic for her.
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“It was very cathartic to be able to put my own menopausal frustrations and rage into an appropriate situation, namely be acting out as a character instead of in my own life,” Peet revealed.
The actress has also been open about her breast cancer diagnosis, which she announced earlier this month.
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Amanda Peet with Eunice Bae on “Your Friends & Neighbors.” (Apple TV)
She told Digital that when she first heard the news, her thoughts were filled with “terror.”
“My children and terror,” she admitted.
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Peet said she made the decision to not tell her dying mother “because she wasn’t well for so long that it was, you know, fairly obvious that I, you know, on the off chance that she would have been able to understand, I wouldn’t have wanted to scare her.”
“So, it wasn’t a hard decision, it was just sort of hard in a more global way because I had been so close to her all my life.”
Peet revealed her breast cancer diagnosis in a New Yorker essay last Saturday, saying that she is stage I and doesn’t need chemotherapy, but will go undergo a lumpectomy and radiation.
