
Amandaland and The Real Lucy
Lucy Punch doesn’t claim to be the perfect mother, but she excels at making life fun. Even as wildfires neared her Los Angeles home, she kept the adventure alive for her two young sons. Returning after evacuation, one thought they’d been on holiday. “Meanwhile, we’d been looking at our phones, going ‘F***ing hell, help,’ and crying,” Punch recalls, miming her panic.
For years, Punch has thrived playing characters you love to hate. Whether as the posh, conniving Amanda in Motherland or a thorn in Cameron Diaz’s side in Bad Teacher, she has a gift for making snide entertaining. But now, in her first leading role, Amandaland, her character takes center stage — and for the first time, we’re meant to empathize.
“It’s a shift,” Punch admits, reflecting on Amanda’s evolution. “She’s not as evil at all now; she’s far more fragile and damaged.” The show picks up with Amanda post-divorce, navigating a downsized life where even her once-glamorous boutique is a thing of the past. The biggest challenge? Making an unlikeable villain someone you root for.
In person, though, Punch couldn’t be further from her on-screen personas. Bounding into a London restaurant, she radiates energy, conspiratorial and strikingly chic. Within minutes, she’s persuading me to order brioche and ice cream at 5 p.m. (“Otherwise I’m going to be bleurgh!” she declares, pulling a perfect deadpan face).
Her career trajectory has been anything but conventional. After an early breakthrough in Hollywood, Woody Allen cast her in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, a role she acknowledges with careful diplomacy today. But typecasting followed, often pegging her as “posh and a bit mean.” Now, she’s eager to push past that. “I’m biding my time to be an evil stepmother, but equally I have more range than that.”
Motherhood has been a learning curve for Punch, who wasn’t sure about kids until she met the right partner. “I know plenty of women—especially in the States—who are really successful, strong, and independent, but didn’t meet someone in that [fertility] window,” she says.
As Amandaland debuts, she steps into the spotlight with humility. “I haven’t thought about it too much, otherwise I’d have freaked out a bit,” she admits. On-screen, she commands attention—off-screen, she naturally earns it.