Amanda Seyfried played a trendy teen in 'Mean Girls.' In 'Long Bright River,' she's a cop trying to solve murders. 'To be honest, there's a great challenge in both.'

For Amanda Seyfried, who’s played both a trend-obsessed popular girl in Mean Girls and a biotech fraud in The Dropout, taking on the role of a Philadelphia police officer in Long Bright River is another challenge in her resume of eclectic roles.

“To be honest, there’s a great challenge in both,” Seyfried told Yahoo Entertainment about comedy vs. drama. “They’re both hard. They’re both very rewarding.”

In Long Bright River, a limited series that premieres March 13 on Peacock and is based on the bestselling book of the same name by Liz Moore, Seyfried plays a single mother who’s investigating multiple deaths of unhoused women in a city ravaged by opioid addiction. Her sister might be one of them.

While she said that comedy is an “art form” whose challenge is “all about timing,” her latest character, Mickey, lives in “darker circumstances and more realistic circumstances [and is] reacting like more of an even-keeled person — not like an idiot, like Karen,” she said, referring to her Mean Girls character. “A sweet idiot.”

In her role as a beat cop, Seyfried wanted to portray a real person who’s not a superhero law enforcement officer — “like Barbara Badass Detective,” as showrunner and executive producer Nikki Toscano told Yahoo Entertainment.

That’s why the Emmy-winning actress, who’s also an executive producer on the series, opted to skip hardcore workouts.

“She has no time for the gym at this point in her life. She's a mother. She's a single mother. She's got to do, you know, pick-ups and drop-offs,” Seyfried said. “The dad of her kid is useless, and she works her ass off at work as a cop, which is a terrifying job. And it just needed to be realistic.”

“I think that’s what [Toscano] means by Barbara … what's it called? Barbara Beefcake Badass,” Seyfried added. “She’s awkward, and I like that.”

Both Toscano and Moore praised Seyfried for her take on the character. Moore, who is also an executive producer and writer on the show, said that while Seyfried was “physically different than the physical description of the character,” the actress “brought such a fury and passion” to the role.

Toscano echoed that, saying Seyfried “brought a fire to the role that was not always on the page.”

“She wanted to play somebody that was risking their lives on the street day in and day out, wondering whether or not they were gonna make it home to their child,” Toscano added.

The show itself shines a bright spotlight on women — not only on Mickey but also on the victims of the crimes. Women have also taken a large role behind the camera, something that was not lost on Seyfried’s co-star Nicholas Pinnock.

“All episodes were directed by women (that’s a first in my 40 years of acting),” the actor, who plays Seyfried’s former partner and friend on the show, posted Jan. 30 on Instagram.

“It's a shame that we have to have this conversation because it shouldn't be a talking point, really,” Pinnock told Yahoo Entertainment. “It's just something that should have been the norm from so long ago, in the same way that it's been the norm that most of the creatives and the directors have been men.”

Describing the feeling on set of having female directors, including Toscano, helming all eight episodes of the limited series, he said there was a lack of “bravado” and a “sense of ego that was missing.”

“And I really hope that we get out of this female director thing,” Pinnock added. “It should just be a director because there's no such thing as a ‘male’ director. It should just be director, and that's it.”

“F*** yeah,” Seyfried said.

While the actress appreciates that she’s been able to portray roles across the comedy and drama spectrum, she acknowledges the challenges that also come with playing a character like Mickey, who’s in “dire straits.”

“It’s hard to cry and to emote and to scream and to be frustrated. It’s hard to do that a lot, over and over again,” Seyfried said. “Sometimes you just don’t have the energy to keep going because it takes a lot of energy to cry hysterically.”

That said, she added that both types of roles are ultimately rewarding: “I love my job.”

Long Bright River begins streaming March 13 on Peacock.