Amanda Peet isn’t one of those actors that’ll bore you with how awkward sex scenes can be. She also doesn’t want to pretend that getting older—even with all its wisdom and perspective—isn’t a total bitch at times too. (She recently disclosed that she was diagnosed with breast cancer while both her parents were in hospice last year; in January she got her first clear scan.) She’s honest and real and witty, and none of that should come as a surprise if you’ve been following Peet’s career since the late ’90s.
Now, as the second season of Apple TV’s Your Friends & Neighbors gets underway, Peet is feeling freer than ever, both in her performance in the critically acclaimed dramedy and outlook on life. Her character, Mel, the ex-wife of Andrew “Coop” Cooper (Jon Hamm) and the mother two teenagers, is similarly rediscovering what it means to start a new chapter of life. At 50, Mel thought she’d have it all figured out by now, but is quickly learning she doesn’t know nearly as much as she’d like to.
At the end of season one, Mel broke things off with Nick, Coop’s former best friend. She and Coop didn’t get back together in the finale, but they were in a good place. When the new season begins, they’re on vacation with their kids. They haven’t been hooking up, but it’s clear they still love each other. (Now, whether they’re “in love,” well, that’s another story.)
If Mel and Coop are meant to be, it’s still a ways off. Upon returning to the tony suburbs of Westmont Village, Mel goes on a date with a handsome new guy, but when they’re trying to have sex in the front seat of his car, she has to stop due to the pain of vaginal dryness. (She refrains from explicitly saying such, but indicates she’s very much “with the program” and “just not feeling well.”)
Later, Mel tells Coop’s sister, Ali, 40, that she wasn’t able to have sex because of menopause, and Ali quickly diagnoses her as just in need of lube. “Don’t mention the perimenopause to Coop,” Mel says. “I feel like I’m getting older, and he’s getting better and better looking.” (If only she could be a fly in the sauna room, where she’d quickly learn her ex-husband is dealing his own middle-age frustrations.)
Lena Hall and Amanda Peet in Your Friends & Neighbors season 2.
Apple TV/Jon Pack
While Mel is quietly coming to terms with her new reality, Amanda Peet, on the other hand, is proudly owning it. “Thank goodness it’s less taboo to talk about now,” Peet tells Glamour of perimenopause and menopause. “I’m 54, so I’m dealing with all of that shit, and it’s pretty hellish. It was actually really fun—and very real—that [creator and executive producer] Jonathan Tropper put it into Mel’s storyline. We saw her keying that random car last season, and God knows I’ve wanted to key a lot of cars in the last three years. People seemed to be really into that part of Mel, so we were really into the idea that she has a lot of rage.”
In the next episode, Mel will discover some of the symptoms of perimenopause (which, yes, includes rage) and what her options are in terms of dealing with this unfamiliar stage in life.
“A lot of people are going into more depth about it, so it’s easier to understand,” Peet says. “People are believing women a little bit more about what perimenopause is like, so I think Tropper was interested in making it funny and a little bit dangerous and fucked up, which are all really fun things to play.”
It’s a nice—and accurate—portrayal that Peet is thrilled to see play out on screen. While the men on the show are going through their own version of “male menopause,” as Peet calls it, she credits her boss for not shying away from Mel’s still very active sex drive as well.
“I have to say, as a 54-year-old woman, it is really birçok that my boss writes me sex scenes and he writes about menopause. Both.”
Amanda Peet can also be seen in the new film Fantasy Life, which just won the narrative feature audience award at SXSW. In it she plays an actor, wife, and mother who ends up having an affair with her kids’s manny. For more information, click here.
