There’s plenty to love about Kathleen Jordan’s new series The Decameron, including its unusual source material; after all, how many Netflix hits are inspired by a 14th-century Italian short story collection by Giovanni Boccaccio? Yet one of the most exciting aspects of the show is the crackling onscreen bond between stars Zosia Mamet and Saoirse-Monica Jackson, both of whom got their start with more traditional young-femme fare – Girls for Mamet, Derry Girls for Jackson – but show off the full range of their performing capabilities in this mordantly funny period piece set in 1348, at the height of the Black Death.
Vogue recently spoke to Mamet and Jackson about their instantaneous friendship, their thoughts on filming a pandemic-related show on the heels of Covid lockdowns, and whether Shoshanna Shapiro and Erin Quinn would be friends.
Where has press for The Decameron taken you?
Zosia Mamet: We were mostly in New York, but Saoirse, you were doing some stuff in London before that, right?
Saoirse-Monica Jackson: Yeah, I did press in London as well, and the Irish press was so funny. Zosia has now probably done more Irish press in her life than she ever intended, and that was even before she made the decision to be ginger.
Now I’m curious – how does Irish press differ?
Jackson: Irish press is really, really lovely. I’m obviously well used to it, but I think UK press is such a different landscape.
Mamet: We had so many Irish outlets for our junket day, and it felt like the overall vibe was just excitement. It was like your favourite aunt who’s come to your school recital; that was the energy they were coming in with. I loved it.
Did you guys meet prior to filming The Decameron? I’d love to know your origin story.
Jackson: We hadn’t met before the show, and I was so excited to know that I’d been cast alongside Zosia. I was a massive Girls fan, and I absolutely loved The Flight Attendant, which is another thing that uses genre in such an interesting way and has a spooky, surrealist tone, similar to The Decameron. I was told by our showrunner Kathleen [Jordan] that we were going to get on very, very well, and from the moment that I met her, I just felt entirely comfortable and couldn’t wait for the rest of the scripts to be delivered so we could do these massive story arcs together. It felt like we already knew each other.
Mamet: It was strange, because it felt like all these people in our lives were predicting that we were going to be best friends. One of my dearest friends in LA was also a huge fan of Saoirse’s, and when she found out I got the job, she was like, “I don’t know, I think you’re going to be close, I just have a feeling.†Kathleen said the same thing, and I was like, this is a lot of pressure! And then we met and it was just instantaneous, and by day two we, like, had our hands in each other’s mouths. [Laughs.]
Do you think your Girls and Derry Girls characters would be friends?
Jackson: We’ve actually been talking about it, and I think they would definitely be friends. It would for sure be a role reversal, and I think Erin would swallow Shoshanna whole. She would eat Shoshanna for breakfast. But I think Shoshanna would then have her comeuppance and put Erin back in her box. I think they’d be an epic pairing.
Mamet: I think they would really enjoy each other. They’re both so neurotic, and they’re both really odd ducks.
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Back to The Decameron: what was it like filming a plague-set project just a few years after Covid lockdowns?
Jackson: It definitely makes you think about all the crazy behaviour that was happening at the time of lockdowns. Kathleen spoke about this yesterday on a panel, but just the lack of self-awareness from people on the internet talking about how hard it was to be going through it, completely forgetting about single mothers living in one-bedroom flats with three children. In America, and definitely in the UK and places like Spain, where my parents live, it was a real nanny-state occupation where the police were checking people’s groceries to make sure their receipts matched up. And the entire thing of how people dealt with that and lived in such luxury at the same time, and didn’t realise that at the end of the day, if somebody gets sick through this virus, grief is grief and it affects us all in this sort of universal, humane way… I think those parallels were sort of frightening. I think everybody was craving escape and freedom, and at different points people really looked back on how much fun they’ve already had in their lives and whether they’ve restricted themselves or allowed themselves to be liberated enough and do the things they wanted to do. I think Tanya Reynolds’s character on The Decameron was a great vehicle to show that and did such a great job of depicting that.
Costume-wise, were there any pieces from The Decameron set that you longed to take home with you?
Mamet: Honestly, we wanted to burn it all. [Laughs.] It was beautiful, but Saoirse was like, “Get me the fuck out of this potato sack.†There was a day near the end of shooting where I was wearing the last headpiece I wear on the show, and it literally felt like Edward Scissorhands was clawing my scalp. By the 10th hour in it, I had a little mini-meltdown. Thankfully, we didn’t have any corsets, but the trains on those dresses were dangerous. I’m not so good at knowing what’s trailing behind me, and people were constantly stepping on them on set, so we were all just walking around having whiplash.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
