If Mammals had arrived in 2023 as just another dark British dramedy about marriage and infidelity, that would’ve been fine. But then Tom Jones shows up. As himself. Sort of. And the whole thing spirals into a tenderly deranged meditation on modern love, complete with plot twists that feel like a literary uppercut.
Malia Kreiling stars opposite James Corden in the Prime Video series, playing Amandine, a woman chasing an idealized vision of love with a frightening level of commitment. “She doesn’t apologize or explain,” Kreiling says. “That’s a tricky quality to play, but it’s refreshing.”
When she first received the offer, the script was vague, cryptic even, but the character struck something in her. “It was an instinctive reaction,” she recalls. “I didn’t have the full story yet, but I just knew I had to try and get in the running.” She landed the role. Then came the rest of the scripts. “It was mind-blowing. The kind of thing where you’re three pages in thinking, okay, I know where this is going — and then you realize you absolutely don’t.”
Kreiling likens the experience to a rollercoaster and still finds herself surprised on rewatch. “Even though I know the script well, I still forget things. It keeps you on your toes,” she laughs. “Jess Butterworth wrote something so tight and deliberate — we really stayed true to his scripts the entire time.”
On the surface, Mammals is about a marriage on the brink. But underneath, it’s asking bigger questions about loyalty, morality, and the unrealistic expectations we carry into adulthood. “The show isn’t didactic,” Kreiling says. “It doesn’t tell you what to think. It gives you a space to have the conversation.” She tells the story of watching the series with her own partner, pausing to debate the show’s gray areas. “What men are held to versus what women are held to… how we view love, what we tolerate, what we hide — it all came up.”
And the show doesn’t make it easy. “Who’s the hero?” she asks, then answers herself. “It depends. It changes. It’s like real life. It depends on who’s watching and where they are in their own story.” Five years ago, Kreiling says she might have found Amandine unlikable. “Now I think she’s a hero. She’s messy, but she refuses to be destroyed. She puts herself back together.”
At the premiere, Kreiling wore a gold kintsugi-style design painted on her arm — a nod to the Japanese philosophy of repairing broken pottery with gold. “I adopted that idea while filming,” she says. “We’re all fractured, but we don’t have to be ugly when we’re broken. That’s Amandine. She sees the cracks and still believes in the magic.”
Kreiling’s own artistic compass tilts toward the poetic. She name-drops Nick Cave and Patti Smith as key influences, and tells a story about seeing Cave live with Death Cab for Cutie’s Zac Rae shortly after filming wrapped. “Listening to Nick Cave, after making Mammals, it was like the full circle closed.”
Unfortunately, she missed out on another musical legend — due to a COVID scare, she never got to meet Tom Jones on set. “They had to quarantine me. I’m still upset about that,” she says with a laugh. “What a moment, though, right? I mean, he’s not even the weirdest part of the show, but he’s perfect in it.”
For all its chaos, Mammals still strikes a nerve, particularly in the way it refuses to label its characters as good or bad. “It’s just real,” Kreiling says. “It’s about the human but hopeful brokenness in all of us.”
And if there’s another season? She’s ready to dive back in — gold-painted scars and all.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the trailer below.