Amy Landecker’s debut feature as a writer-producer-director-star, the romantic comedy For Worse, premiered at SXSW in 2025 and is out now in theaters. Her filmography also includes standout roles in S#!%House, the 2020 SXSW Grand Jury Prize winner; Power on Netflix, opposite Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt; Beatriz at Dinner, and the Coen Brothers’ Best Picture Nominee A Serious Man. Recently, she starred alongside Bryan Cranston in Showtime’s Your Honor and appeared in BJ Novak’s The Premise. She is also widely recognized for her role in the critically acclaimed Transparent, which spanned five seasons and garnered a SAG nomination, and for her powerful performance in The Handmaid’s Tale, in which she appeared in three seasons. Her previous television credits include Gaslit, alongside Julia Roberts, the HBO Max series Minx and the Emmy Award-winning Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Three Great Things is Talkhouse’s series in which artists tell us about three things they absolutely love. To mark the current theatrical release of For Worse, the new romantic comedy written, directed by and starring Amy Landecker, with a stellar supporting cast featuring Bradley Whitford, Nico Hiraga, Gaby Hoffmann, Ken Marino, Missi Pyle, Kiersey Clemons and Simon Helberg, newly minted multi-hyphenate Landecker shared some of her favorite things in life. — N.D.
Topo Chico
I probably go through three or four bottles of Topo Chico a day. The first thing I do in the morning is drink some, so I always have a bottle by my bedside. My husband makes fun of me because if there isn’t any Topo Chico in the house, I will literally start to get anxious. I’m completely addicted to it.
A smaller company originally made Topo Chico, so it used to be something you could only get at certain stores on the east side of Los Angeles, which gave it an air of exclusivity. But then Coca-Cola bought it, so it’s really not as special as it once was. I cannot stand a drink that loses its fizz, and a special thing about Topo Chico is that its carbonation will last over 24 hours. Not everybody likes that, because it’s really intense, but I love that burning sensation in my throat, like the heat of a gin and tonic. (I don’t drink alcohol, so I have to find things to drink that have a certain quality that I especially like.) I found out such heavy carbonation is actually not good for your stomach, but I don’t care. You’ve got to pick your poison. Even though I do have some issues with my gut, no one’s going to take my IBS bubbles away from me!
My Dog Angie
My dog Angie, who’s a Chihuahua, rules my life in a way that is probably unhealthy. Right now, I’m in the mix for a fantastic job, but it shoots in New York and I live in Los Angeles. New York is my favorite city other than Los Angeles, and if I could, I would buy an apartment there and live the bicoastal dream. But my dog has severe anxiety disorder and she was abused when she was little – she follows me everywhere I go, and I’m her person! I was working on a play in New York this past fall called Caroline, and I was there for four months. I’ve never been away from home that long since I got Angie, and I couldn’t take her. She can’t walk down the block in Pasadena without shaking and being terrified, so taking her to New York was out of the question.
After I’d been gone for a bit, Angie was fine, but I was so destroyed that I ended up buying a puppy on the street that I could foster for the time I was in New York. I knew I needed another dog there to stop me feeling so upset about being away from Angie. So there’s literally a possibility that I will turn down a really great job just because I don’t want to go to New York again …
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People say, “She’s a dog – you can train her,” but I had a celebrity dog trainer work with her for a very long time and she told me, “I truly have not really encountered a dog like this.” We came up with elaborate ways to make her comfortable and she has gotten better, but there’s something about her needing me that hits me in a weird, incredibly deep way. I identify with separation anxiety, so I probably anthropomorphize her a lot, but there are those dogs that just can’t be alone. Because of Angie, I never want to leave home, and that’s hard when you’re an actor, because absolutely nothing shoots in Los Angeles anymore. So, I gotta figure it out!
Competition TV Shows
I don’t like cooking or baking shows, because they really make me hungry and I will literally have to go buy the thing that I’m watching, but I love competition shows like The Voice, American Idol and America’s Got Talent. First of all, as a performer, it’s really interesting to watch for the drama of the contestants’ stories. I love the narrative of someone rising to the occasion – or not rising to the occasion – and I’m fascinated by the people who have those moments. I’ve experienced both those scenarios myself, where the stakes were high and I’ve fallen short when the job was so close, and also when I’ve felt like a feeling came over me and I was channeling something.
The other aspect is that I love predicting winners and really get off on it. It’s a big game for me, and I’m somehow able to sense the collective consciousness around the contenders, which makes me know I’m right about who’s going to win. A couple days ago, I was on the phone with some very successful actress friends and I was telling them who I thought was going to win at the Oscars. They said, “Well, how do you know?!” The reason I know is, I have a special skill for predicting collective consciousness; I’m almost 80% right with any prediction.
At the Critics Choice Awards recently, I was sitting next to an actor who was nominated that night – although I didn’t know that at the time. The whole night, I was correctly calling the winners, so he said to me, “Wow, how do you know?” Then I suddenly realized that he was nominated in the next category, and that he was not going to win (because I knew who was going to win). I almost leaned in to tell him, “You’re not going to win.” Luckily, I stopped myself, because I would die if someone did that to me, but it’s the kind of thing I can accidentally do sometimes.
People love doing Oscars pools, but what’s been interesting to me about being in Hollywood is you really learn that it’s basically a popularity contest and a collective decision. There’s sometimes a thing that comes out of left field, like a scandal or a surprise, but it’s usually not that complicated, and correctly predicting these outcomes is really fun.
