3 Thoughts We Had While Watching The Trailer for Amanda Seyfried’s ‘Long Bright River’

When a popular actress like Amanda Seyfried takes on a new project, expectations rise, and Long Bright River, her latest TV series on Peacock, has certainly piqued the interest of her fans since it’s a role that’s different than what she used to play. Based on the novel of the same name by Liz Moore, this crime drama shows the complexities of family, addiction, and the effects of a drug pandemic, set against a rain-soaked, gloomy Philadelphia. 

Amanda Seyfried plays the role of patrol officer Mickey, dedicated to searching for her sister Kacey, a drug addict who often goes missing, while also tracking down the person responsible for the deaths of multiple women. 

From Mean Girls to Mamma Mia!, Seyfried has been known to play peppy characters. Though her recent roles in the 2020 biopic Mank and as Elizabeth Holmes in the 2022 movie The Dropout for which she won the Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress, showed us her serious acting range. 

In Long Bright River, she’s given another chance to flex her acting muscles. She managed to convey to the audience her worry about her sister, her hometown and her desperation to get to the bottom of all the killings. She looked like a wearied police officer who’s seen the dark side of humanity while still trying to do what she knows is right and her duty as an officer of the law. 

In one scene of the trailer, a man told Mickey that “Kacey’s always missing, that’s what she does,” giving us, the audience, a sense that he already gave up on her and that Mickey should too. He even asked her, “Don’t know why you keep letting that girl in?” 

It shows us how addiction isn’t just the problem of the person struggling with it; it affects everyone around them. Some are willing to help, no matter how many times the person relapses or does harm to sustain their addiction or hurt those who still care for them. Meanwhile, others choose to give up for the sake of their own peace of mind. 

A fellow police officer reprimanded Mickey for trying to do her job (of course, she’s personally invested but the trailer showed that she cared for the other women who are the target of the killer) and reminded her that she’s a patrol officer, not a detective. He didn’t do it in a manner that will make you think he cared for her safety, rather he wanted her to stay on her lane. He might be a patrol officer who failed numerous times to become a detective or he’s a detective threatened by her. Either way, it showed us the harsh realities of work politics and crab mentality. 

Long Bright River will premiere on Peacock on March 13, 2025.