Amanda Righetti is teasing what to expect from her upcoming crime thriller series, Scarpetta.
“Dorothy is really unhinged. She’s really unfiltered. She is a man-eater,” Righetti, 42, exclusively told Us Weekly of her character in the show, which premieres on Prime Video on Wednesday, March 11. “She is very opinionated. She doesn’t care about what anybody thinks about her, and she is very ready to just interject herself into any circumstance. And I just love it because she’s such the wild card to this procedural model. And she kind of acts as a little bit of, like, comic relief, I would say. But she’s also, like, there for the drama.”
Righetti plays young Dorothy in Scarpetta, which follows a forensic pathologist named Kay Scarpetta (Nicole Kidman). Jamie Lee Curtis plays the older version of Dorothy, Kay’s older sister. The cast also stars Rosy McEwen, Ariana DeBose, Savannah Lumar, Bobby Cannavale, Jake Cannavale, Simon Baker and Hunter Parrish.
Righetti revealed that she and Curtis, 67, talked about Dorothy’s “backstory” to make sure they were on the same page regarding the character’s “mannerisms.” Though she and Curtis didn’t have any scenes together, the pair started prepping for their roles before filming.
“In terms of the mannerisms, like. Jamie, she does talk with her hands a lot, but she brings that to Dorothy because Dorothy is so over the top, there’s a lot of hand talking with Dorothy. So I tried to pick up on that a little bit,” Righetti explained. “And there’s a dialect coach that is there to just sort of make sure that everybody’s … because we’re dealing with ’90s and present day and everybody is kind of from different parts of the world, making sure that the accent of any specific character that it’s matching for both present, day and past. So it was also trying to get a little bit of the cadence, like the rhythm of the way Jamie speaks, to intertwine that into Dorothy in the past, as another way to just have a similarity with her that would have a through line.”
Righetti also weighed in on The O.C.‘s resurgence in popularity. The actress played Hailey Nichol during the first and second seasons of the teen drama, which aired on Fox from 2003 to 2007.
“I think what’s interesting is I never really was [recognized by fans] right after I got off the show,” she shared.
Righetti added that The O.C. has gone through “milestones,” including the 20th anniversary of its premiere in 2023.
“You know, having time and space from [the show], I get recognized more often now, later in my career, than I did earlier on,” the actress, who played Hailey Nichol during the first and second seasons of the teen drama, continued. “Yeah, it’s really amazing to me. Though it’s like, ‘Wow, it really shows how pop-culture stuff can grow legs.’”
Righetti noted that The O.C. was her “first big break,” so she “wasn’t really sure what to expect” regarding the show’s popularity.
“But I remember walking into the makeup trailer [for] the episode that Paris Hilton was on, and at that point, the show had really started to pick up, and they were in every ragtag magazine from every side of the spectrum,” she explained. “And it was like, as the season went on, there was just more and more tear sheets from magazines that were being, like, pasted on the walls. And I feel like that’s when it kind of started to sink in, where I was like, ‘Wow, this is getting a lot of attention and a lot of coverage.’”
Righetti said her own fame from the show “came in a slow burn.”
As for why The O.C. has become so popular with younger generations, Righetti said, “I think it really touches on the teenage angst, and no matter what generation you’re in, teenagers go through that phase of awkwardness and making hard decisions. And I think there’s a relatability to it, even though now there’s more electronic devices and things to grab people’s attention.”
The Mentalist star continued, “At the core of it, there’s still that time period in a person’s life [that] is so tumultuous, and so I think it really touches on that chord, and it’s timeless in that sense that it still touches on it. It’s survived really well and held up really well over time in terms of the themes of the show.”
