Sarah Drew Explains How Apple TV+’s ‘Amber Brown’ Helped Her ‘Take an Honest Look’ at Being a Mom
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Sarah Drew knows all too well what it feels like to watch your kid go through a difficult time. And due to those personal experiences, the actress quickly fell into her role as a mom trying to help her pre-teen daughter adjust to some major life changes in Apple TV+’s “Amber Brown.”
“Amber Brown” follows 11-year-old Amber (Carsyn Rose) as she tries to find her voice through art and music in the wake of her parents’ divorce. Drew plays her mom Sarah who, despite not always getting things right, is determined to see her daughter succeed. The story ended up hitting even closer to home than the “Grey’s Anatomy” alum ever anticipated when her son began experiencing some turmoil at school during production.
“My son was going through a tough transition into a new school,” she told TheWrap. “I remember texting my friends and sitting on my balcony in Utah, where we were shooting, and weeping for what a hard time he was having. He’s such an awesome kid. So yeah, it does definitely click us straight into Sarah Brown feeling the same way about Amber and just wanting her to find good people and wanting her to be OK.”
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In TheWrap’s new interview, Drew opens up about getting deep with her 11-year-old co-star and how being a mom in real life has impacted her approach to all the motherly roles she’s played onscreen.
TheWrap: Amber Brown is such a cute series. What attracted you to it?
Sarah Drew: I just really loved the script. I wanted to work with Bonnie, but secondly, I thought the characters just leapt off the page in a really unique and fun way. I really loved the dynamic between Amber and her mom, Sarah. I thought it resonated very deeply with me as a mom myself. I just felt like these conversations were lifted straight out of my life. And I really loved the unique quality of using animation as a way to get inside the brain and imagination and heart and mind of this 11-year-old. [It’s] just a really joyful, hopeful but honest, and funny, charming show.
I do love that ‘Amber Brown’ is funny but also gets pretty deep at times.
Because that’s life. I mean, anyone who has kids and has lived through the pandemic will be able to tell you that we’ve all sort of been in a massive, collective grieving process for a few years. So I just don’t think we should shy away from the reality of sadness and hardship in the lives of our children because they’re feeling it just like us.
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I’m glad you brought up being a mom. How has becoming a mom impacted your approach to Sarah Brown, and also the other moms you’ve played on ‘Cruel Summer’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy’?
I love anything that allows grace for motherhood experience, because I think there is a lot of pressure to do the right parenting techniques, make sure your kid doesn’t want the therapy because of you. [Laughs]. By the way, we’re all going to need therapy. We’re just bringing our own new things to this generation. I love this show and I love being able to take an honest look at a mother trying her best and sometimes screwing up but being committed to repairing [the relationship] with her kid, being committed to finding that way to create boundaries in a healthy way, and not being afraid to admit when she messed up.
You and Carsyn have a great dynamic. How did you two curate that?
Yeah, we connected immediately, really when we first met over Zoom. We weren’t even in the same room. [We’re] looking at computer screens in different states and I felt instantly connected to her. Talk to either one of us and you’ll hear from both of us that as soon as we looked into each other’s eyes, we were locked in. We can make each other cry. We can make each other laugh. She’s so open and responsive as an actress, which is so rare for someone as young as she is. There’s nothing performative about what she’s doing. She is just living and breathing in the scenes and she’s a very old soul, so she understands and can articulate emotional things on a very kind of grown up level. It was very easy to forge that bond and connection.
Watching the show, it seems like you both were having a blast.
Oh my gosh, we had such a blast. I love that girl. She is so great. My son was going through a tough transition into a new school [while we were shooting], which is basically what Amber’s doing in the show. And I would be talking to her mom about it and then she would pop her head out and be like, ‘Just tell him it’s gonna be OK. He just needs to find a couple of people, and as soon as he finds his couple of people, it’s going to be awesome. That’s what happened with me and that’s what’s gonna happen with him.’ She’s such a sweet human.
That is just so sweet. And I’m sure that made your experience on set all the more personal, since your son was going through something so similar.
Oh, absolutely. I mean, my mom has always said that you’re only as happy as your least happy child. I was able to call him when he had his first day at school, and it was a really rough first day. But I heard about it on a FaceTime call, and I remember texting my friends and sitting on my balcony in Utah, where we were shooting, and weeping for what a hard time he was having. He’s such an awesome kid. So yeah, it does definitely click us straight into Sarah Brown feeling the same way about Amber and just wanting her to find good people and wanting her to be okay.
Like we talked about earlier, we might look back at these problems when we’re older and realize they were smaller than we thought. But that doesn’t make them less scary in the moment.
Absolutely. I think there’s something really important about validating your kids’ experience, even though you as an adult have wisdom and life experience to tell you that they’ll move past it. In the moment, it feels like it’s life and death. And if you don’t get it, if you don’t affirm the experience that they’re having and validate it in some way, then they just won’t feel heard. So I think the show is a really neat window both from the kids’ perspective with their parents, because you really get an insight into what mom is going through, and for the parents what the kids are going through to give them a very visceral experience of, “This is how big it all feels.”
