Amanda Peet celebrates (last night) her cover in the July/August issue of Gotham Magazine.  Sarah Paulson and Josh Strickland were on hand to help with the celebrations.  The magazine, dedicated to “bringing the best of New York to the best of New York features an interview with Amanda (interview and a couple of pics after the jump):

GOTHAM: Where did you grow up?
AMANDA PEET: In New York City! I grew up on 11th Street and Fifth Avenue. I live in Tribeca now. I’m a Gotham girl.

G: A true one! Where did you go to school?
AP: Manhattan France—a Quaker school.

G: And your husband, writer David Benioff, is from here, too. How did you meet?
AP: Blind date. But I looked up a picture of him first.

G: Of course. Who set you up?
AP: Another writer, who was working on The Practice—this friend of ours, Peter Blake. But a year and a half before my first blind date with him, my manager, who’s also my dear friend, called me and said—and I was living with another man at the time—“I met your husband last night. But he has a girlfriend.” And then a year later Peter Blake called me and said, “Do you want to go on a date with this guy David Benioff?” I remembered what my manager had said. So when we got married, the rabbi told the story.

G: How fortuitous.
AP: I think my manager just got lucky.

G: Where did you get married?
AP: At the Quaker Meeting House where I went to school on 16th Street and Rutherford Avenue. We had a Jewish wedding in a Quaker meeting house, so that’s one of my favorite buildings.

G: Tell us about the work you’re doing with vaccines.
AP: My sister is a physician and my brother-inlaw is at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He works in infectious diseases and his mentor is [infectious-disease specialist] Dr. Paul Offit. Our plan is to try to clarify and dispel some of the misinformation about the dangers of vaccines and the association between autism and vaccines. They’ve been coming out with studies for the last 40 years, and none of them show any association between autism and vaccines.

G: And you’re championing the cause?
AP: Yes. The idea is that by the age of two, every child should be vaccinated—the organization is called Every Child by Two. I think there’s a feeling, especially in Hollywood, that it’s cool to be really skeptical of pharmaceutical companies. I think that we’re so used to being skeptical that sometimes we take it too far. It leads to what can be really dangerous misinformation.

G: It’s great that you’re so informed as a new mom. You take it very seriously.
AP: I wanted to be a mom. I wanted a baby for so long, and as soon as I met David I knew that I wanted him to be the father of my children.

G: Did you tell him that on the first date?
AP: Hell, no! And [after I gave birth] I had a fairly serious postpartum depression. I think it was because I had a really euphoric pregnancy.

G: So, the hormones had been working in your favor.
AP: Yes. I was like a princess and I was just euphoric and productive and I felt really sexy. But it all came crashing down the second she was born. And I was sleep-deprived beyond belief.

G: You were expecting to feel good?
AP: Fulfilled, yes. And now I want to be honest about it because I think there’s still so much shame when you have mixed feelings about being a mom instead of feeling this sort of “bliss.” I think a lot of people still really struggle with that, but it’s hard to find other people who are willing to talk about it…. In a weird way, the thing that’s been the most extraordinary about being a mom is the craving that I have for her—it’s strange because I’m in love with David, but then I’m also in love with this other person.

G: Tell us about your new film The X-Files: I Want to Believe.
AP: I play an FBI agent. I enlist Mulder [David Duchovny] to help me determine whether this psychic is for real or not. During the shoot it was like 30 below, and we were doing night shoots in the middle of snow fields around Vancouver. The conditions were absolutely miserable. David really kept me afloat, singing dirty songs. We’d pick a song and then see who could make up the dirtiest lyrics.

G: What did you think of the screenplay?
AP: I love the script. It’s really smart, and [writer and X-Files creator] Chris Carter’s great. I must have been in a really wimpy “mom” mode, though, because he was constantly like, “You’re in charge of seven men—don’t forget.” Anytime I did a take, even if I was just saying one line in an office, he’d be like, “You’re in charge of seven men! You’re in charge of seven men!”

G: What’s up next?
AP: I’ve been shooting in Boston with Mark Ruffalo and Ethan Hawke, doing this movie called Real Men Cry. We went back and forth three times from Boston to Vancouver, shooting from nights to days and days to nights. It’s an indie movie. But we’re going back to do another film there—a disaster movie directed by Roland Emmerich called 2012, with John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Thandie Newton. It starts shooting August 22.

G: Do you pick different roles now that you’re a mom?
AP: No. I still feel really competitive and ambitious— and sad and hurt if someone doesn’t like me. G: Do you think that winning an award could change that? AP: I think if you’ve gotten an Academy Award, maybe you feel you’re really incredibly lucky, and that you’ve been nominated, you’ve been anointed. Maybe you feel like it’s easier to leave the party. I think I’ve found that kind of peacefulness… but it came more when I met David, I think, and probably partly because he’s a writer and started reading my scripts.

G: He gave you some guidance in making the right choices?
AP: He helped me. And just when I hit my early 30s, I started to have feelings that there’s room for everybody and I don’t have to be—nor could I be—Meryl Streep. I can forge my own path and make it interesting for me. Hopefully, for others, too, who are in the audience. [G]

Photos:  Getty Images