Amanda Seyfried has admitted that her viral cover of Joni Mitchell’s hit single “California” earned her more work than her first Emmy win did.
In March, while promoting her crime drama miniseries Long Bright River on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Seyfried showed off her dulcimer-playing talents with a pitch-perfect rendition of the 1971 folk-rock classic.
While the Mamma Mia! star’s performance certainly made an impact on listeners, leading to a surge in streams for Mitchell, it appears it also made a significant impact on her career.
“I got work from that,” Seyfried said proudly in a new interview with Who What Wear. “I feel like that made more of an impact than my Emmy did.”
The Mean Girls actor, 40, who won her first Emmy in 2022 for her lead portrayal of convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes in the drama miniseries The Dropout, revealed during her late-night appearance that she picked up the niche art during the pandemic.
“[Mitchell] wrote a lot of the songs from the Blue album on the dulcimer,” Seyfried explained, “and I learned a lot of her stuff from the Blue album when the world stopped.”
As she began the song, she told the audience that she was nervous, later admitting to the fashion outlet that she had downed a glass of wine beforehand to gather her courage.
Her rendition ignited speculation that she was auditioning to play the 82-year-old singer-songwriter legend in Cameron Crowe’s upcoming biopic.
“It was not an audition,” Seyfried insisted on an episode of the Just for Variety podcast. “In fact, I didn’t even consider that, which is funny. What I know about that project is that I’m very, very much aged out of young Joni.”
The Queen’s Gambit alum Anya Taylor-Joy, 29, is reportedly in talks to star as the young version of Mitchell, while Meryl Streep is expected to portray the contemporary version of the “Big Yellow Taxi” artist.
Seyfried, meanwhile, leads Paul Feig’s new psychological thriller The Housemaid, alongside Sydney Sweeney, Brandon Sklenar and Michele Morrone.
Out in theaters December 19, the film is an adaptation of Freida McFadden’s bestselling 2022 psychological thriller about a young woman with a criminal past who’s hired as a live-in maid for a wealthy family, only to discover they are hiding dark and dangerous secrets.
Last week, Seyfried and Sweeney appeared on the Today show to talk about the film. During their interview with host Willie Geist about the book-to-movie adaptation, the duo spoke about cultivating a friendship behind the scenes, recalling spending time on set in a bedroom they called the “girls’ room,” where they crocheted and hung out on a bed with their friends in between takes.
Geist then quipped that the actors would “decompress covered in makeup, blood, and stuff like that,” which the stars agreed with before realizing that they had accidentally revealed a potential spoiler.
“Oh God, there was a lot of blood,” said Seyfried, who was celebrating her 40th birthday, before she quickly corrected herself: “Wait! Spoilers!”
As Geist looked shocked, Sweeney playfully joined in on scolding him: “Yeah! We can’t spoil!”
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