The 10 Best Zosia Mamet Movies & TV Shows, Ranked

Zosia Mamet comes from a long lineage of folks making names for themselves in some capacity in the entertainment field. As one can probably tell from her last name, she’s the daughter of playwright and screenwriter David Mamet, who’s behind such works as “Glengarry Glen Ross” and the 1997 political satire “Wag the Dog.” Mamet’s mother, Lindsay Crouse, is an actor, while her grandfather on that side of the family is Russel Crouse, another playwright. 

It almost seems like Mamet was destined for big things with that lineage, and she’s certainly made a name for herself over the past decade of consistent work. From dramas to comedies (but mostly comedies), she’s done it all, especially after breaking out with her role of Shoshanna Shapiro on “Girls.”

These are the best Mamet movies and TV shows yet, but don’t worry. Despite providing one of the most ridiculous moments in “Madame Web,” her performance as a computer prodigy there didn’t make it onto the list. Instead, I focused on looking at the projects that, as a whole, are exceptional while also considering what Mamet brings to each one. This is a celebration of the talented actor and a look back on what fans should check out next if they’re tired of rewatching “Girls.”

Voice acting deserves every bit of recognition as traditional acting, and Zosia Mamet has done her fair share of animated projects over the years. She’s actually had a couple of different parts on “Regular Show,” and you’ve likely heard her as Princess Ladyfingers on “Harley Quinn.” But special attention deserves to be paid to her exceptional yet highly underrated role as Hekapoo on “Star vs. the Forces of Evil.”

The series follows Star Butterfly (Eden Sher), who is sent to Earth to learn to be a princess, but she still goes on plenty of magical adventures. That includes frequent run-ins with Hekapoo (Mamet), a member of the Magic High Commission, who’s a trickster but keeps things playful with Star and her friend, Marco (Adam McArthur).

Mamet brings a ton of fun energy to Hekapoo, or H-Poo as Marco affectionately calls her, much to her dismay. The actor goes from intensity to flirtatiousness with ease and has a lot of great comedic timing. Honestly, “Star vs. the Forces of Evil” doesn’t get enough recognition as it deserves as a show similar to “Rick and Morty” in the way it blends humor with high-concept plotlines (only it’s appropriate for children). 

Before seeing any movie with a dog, it’s natural for prospective viewers to wonder if anything bad will happen to said dog. Given the bleak nature of the 2016 dark comedy “Wiener-Dog,” you probably know all you need to know about how the titular canine will be treated.

The film follows the life of a dachshund who gets shuffled from one owner to the next. It’s basically an anthology movie where each segment consists of the subtle tragedies that encompass these characters’ lives, all connected via that wiener dog. “Wiener-Dog” has a positively stacked cast, featuring the likes of Greta Gerwig, Danny DeVito, Kieran Culkin, and Zosia Mamet, the last of whom appears in the final segment as an anxious woman asking her grandmother for money to fund her boyfriend’s art project. 

Mamet plays the twitchy granddaughter well, but the film as a whole works best as a meditation on loss, regret, and fading promises of something better just on the horizon. “Wiener-Dog” isn’t going to be for everyone unless you happen to be super into lengthy shots of dog diarrhea. There are moments that’ll make you laugh and others that’ll depress you, as this is far from the average dog movie that tends to get made a la “A Dog’s Journey.” 

After breaking out with “It Follows,” director David Robert Mitchell decided to go in a completely different and polarizing direction with the neo-noir “Under the Silver Lake.” The movie stars Andrew Garfield as Sam, who falls in love with a woman after one night and then embarks on a massive search after she mysteriously disappears without a trace. This puts him on a collision course with plenty of eccentric characters, including Troy, played by Zosia Mamet.

Sam follows Troy around after she picks up a box, with arguably her best scene coming when Sam follows her into a restroom, and after accosting her, she knees him in the groin. “Under the Silver Lake” is full of twists and turns, with an ending that may or may not satisfy viewers if they were looking for something more along the lines of earth-shattering revelations.

“Under the Silver Lake” is a film filled with symbolism and hidden meanings, with one interesting recurring motif being the inclusion of nepo babies. In addition to Mamet, there’s also Riley Keough (granddaughter to Elvis Presley) and Grace Van Patten (daughter to director Timothy Van Patten). Does this add another layer of meaning to Mitchell’s labyrinthian dark comedy? Or, like Sam, are we poking in areas that shouldn’t be poked?

“Dickinson” probably shouldn’t be watched if you’re trying to learn all of the concrete facts about Emily Dickinson’s (Hailee Steinfeld) life. The show is littered with anachronisms, such as characters using modern slang. However, the show does something far more interesting by fudging the truth in certain matters in order to deliver an entertaining TV series that still points toward the far more important emotional truth.

Zosia Mamet plays Louisa May Alcott, the author of “Little Women,” and Mamet spoke with Town & Country Magazine about the show’s unique way of getting the truth across. “I did some research and found out that so much of the show is based on reality,” Mamet explained. “Louisa thought that ‘Little Women’ was smut; she basically wrote to get her family out of bankruptcy, and it’s considered part of the American canon!”

That ethos becomes integral during her first appearance on “Dickinson” with the episode, “There’s a certain Slant of Light.” She tells Emily simply to write what sells and not to be so precious with every little word she makes, much like how Alcott merely wanted to make some money off an integral part of American literature. It’s a humorous viewpoint to espouse, and Mamet brings sardonic wit to drive the point home. 

“The Decameron” provided a new opportunity for Zosia Mamet. While she’s normally playing nice characters or women who maybe lack some common sense, her role of Pampinea is a straight-up villain. She’s part of the nobility who move to the countryside while the Black Death ravages the rest of Europe, creating a dichotomy between her concerns and the much more real troubles of her servants. Her main interest throughout the series is to marry before she reaches the horrifically old age of (gasp!) 28.

Mamet even spoke about the fun of playing such a different character from the rest of her filmography. She told Today, “I think genuinely she is a character [who] just … has a very severe arrested development. She’s a toddler.” Pampinea’s brand of villainy certainly feels far more on point when watching the show as a COVID-19 allegory. 

Since she’s rich, she sees herself as above everything else and focuses on trivial matters while the poor just want to survive and be treated with a modicum of respect. While “The Decameron” has mostly been billed as a limited series, there has been some chatter regarding another season, perhaps turning it into an anthology series. Without giving anything away, one probably shouldn’t expect Pampinea to return if there is more “Decameron” to come. 

HBO’s “Girls” garnered a bit of a reputation for itself for pandering to so-called hipsters. Zosia Mamet’s character, Shoshanna, didn’t lean into that aesthetic as much compared to other characters on the show, but the actor embraced her inner hipster on a hilarious guest spot on “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.” Mamet appears with her real-life husband, Evan Jonigkeit, on the Netflix comedy as a couple of hipsters interested in renting Kimmy’s (Ellie Kemper) apartment as an AirBnB while she’s away on Season 2’s “Kimmy Drives a Car!”

Her character was so good they brought her back for Season 4’s “Kimmy and the Beest!” as hipsters who get tricked into paying a bunch of money for tickets to a children’s theater show. It sort of feels like stunt casting in the midst of the massive success of “Girls,” but when Mamet is this funny, especially with lines like “I can’t wait to tell our thrusband,” it’s hard to pay it any mind.

“Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” was great for a lot of reasons, but one is how it utilized guest stars. From Ice-T delivering a eulogy to Patrick Stewart being the voice of an Apple Watch, “Kimmy” leaned into absurdity with celebrity cameos well. Mamet playing a clueless hipster was just some extra flavor on an already outstanding show. 

Throughout much of her career thus far, Zosia Mamet has played supporting roles. While she may be in the main cast on the likes of “Girls” and “The Decameron,” she’s still typically on the fringes of what’s going on in main storylines. Luckily, she proved she has what it takes to lead a feature-length movie with the fantastic “Molli and Max in the Future.”

The low-budget science-fiction film sees Molli and Max (Aristotle Athari) as the titular characters who repeatedly run into each other over the course of 12 years and multiple dimensions. They may get pulled apart from things like intergalactic wars, but them continually running into one another forces them to reckon with the question of whether there’s something truly between them that’s worth exploring. 

The movie’s a fun mixture of genres, with /Film’s review of “Molli and Max in the Future” heaping particular praise upon the two lead actors: “Bless Zosia Mamet and Aristotle Athari for opening themselves to every uncomfortable conversational sputter or emotional tailspin in the name of showing dating for what it is, and still finding exceptional optimism through it all.” You can presently watch the film for free on Tubi, and it’s worth checking out if you’re in the mood for a high-concept rom-com that shows off what a great actor Mamet is. 

Zosia Mamet was still getting her feet wet in the entertainment industry when she was cast as Joyce Ramsay on “Mad Men” Season 4. Joyce brings a new vibe to the series, introducing Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) to a more countercultural world than what she knows at Sterling Cooper. One could even call Joyce a prototype of what would become known as a hipster, so maybe “Mad Men” laid the groundwork for Mamet appearing later on “Girls.”

Joyce only has a brief recurring role across Seasons 4 and 5 of the drama series, but she’s integral to Peggy’s personal development. She represents a countercultural mindset and introduces Peggy to new ideas, showing her there’s more to life and joy than the traditionally conservative ideals spouted at Sterling Cooper. 

Mamet ruminated with Vulture on where Joyce might’ve ended up after the series ended: “With Joyce, who knows! My guess is she joined the Peace Corps and ended up in some far away land … Probably seduced a princess and is now living large.” Joyce wasn’t seen on “Mad Men” again after Season 5, which is also when “Girls” likely would’ve started filming. “Girls” naturally helped launch Mamet’s career to greater heights, but it’s fascinating to consider where else the show could’ve taken such an intriguing character had Mamet been around.

Everyone deserves a ride-or-die bestie, and that’s what Zosia Mamet provides as Annie Mouradian on “The Flight Attendant.” Technically, she’s the therapist to Cassie Bowden (Kaley Cuoco) who becomes further entangled in Cassie’s life after Cassie wakes up next to a dead body and needs to clear her name. Annie’s able to acquire information to help with the case while also aiding Cassie through her journey to stop drinking. They don’t always get along swimmingly, but Annie is ultimately a force for good in Cassie’s otherwise chaotic life.

“The Flight Attendant” isn’t just noteworthy in Mamet’s filmography because it’s really good. It also introduced Mamet to Cuoco, who became fast friends in real life. Mamet spoke with Vanity Fair about how special these dynamics are. “Female friendships are such an important thing,” Mamet proclaimed. “I feel really lucky that I have had the opportunity throughout my career to portray those in hopefully very real, human ways.”

“The Flight Attendant” was canceled after just two seasons, but that wasn’t too concerning for Cuoco, who always saw it as a limited series anyway. Still, it’s a shame we never got to see more of her chemistry with Mamet, so here’s hoping we see the two play besties once more at some point. 

If an actor’s lucky, they wind up with at least one role to which everything else they do gets compared. It defines their filmography, and hopefully, allows them to branch out and show they’re capable of so much more. As if it wasn’t evident from “Girls” getting referenced several times already on this list, Zosia Mamet’s part as Shoshanna Shapiro on the HBO series is her best to date. 

It’s all the more impressive considering Shoshanna wasn’t supposed to be a main character on the show, as creator Lena Dunham has stated (via The Huffington Post): “[Mamet] definitely shifted my original conception of the character, which was a much more tangential girl, whose main job was to illuminate how un-‘Sex and the City’ this world was. But Zosia’s read — her odd intonations, her roiling insecurity — gave me the sense that Shoshanna could be something much larger.”

Shoshanna’s endurance is a testament to Mamet’s abilities as an actor. Even playing a more naive character amidst the far more rambunctious trio of other girls in the main cast still allows her to stand out. It’s now hard to imagine “Girls” being such the success it was without her, much in the same way it’s hard to imagine “Girls” without Adam Driver, who admitted to almost passing on the show for not understanding it. Shoshanna’s a great comedic character on “Girls,” and heck, I’d argue she’s the piece that holds the entire show together.