Zosia Mamet’s canary diamond ring is a mystery. Her mom found it in her late grandmother’s broom closet. Neither Zosia Mamet nor her mom knows where it came from — they never saw her grandmother wear it. The canary stone is so large that one of Ms. Mamet’s colleagues referred to it as her “gumball.”
“Never in my life would I have a ring like this unless it had been passed down,” said Ms. Mamet, who starred as Shoshanna in HBO’s Emmy-winning series “Girls” and who debuted her essay collection, “Does This Make Me Funny,” in September.
In an interview that’s been edited and condensed, Ms. Mamet tells the story of how this heirloom piece of jewelry found its way from a stashed-away shoe box to her ring finger.
Talk to me about your ring.
It was my grandmother’s. My mom gave it to my husband to give to me. They think it’s pretty old — early 1910s, 1920s, maybe. It also has this crazy thing that is very rare now; because they don’t really teach how to do this anymore because it’s so hard to do without shattering the stone: If you look directly down into it, there’s a tiny hole in the very bottom of the diamond where it turns into a little point, which they used to do because when light hits it, it makes it sparkle more.
We found this ring the week before my grandmother died. My mom was sitting up with her one night, and she was, at this point, just in and out of lucidity. She woke up in the middle of the night and grabbed my mom and was like, “Where’s my canary diamond?” No one had ever seen a canary diamond. And my mom, who had been told by the doctor that, at this point, you just kind of go with whatever she says, was like, “Go back to sleep. We’ll look for it in the morning.” And she was like, “You have to go find my canary diamond.”
My grandmother had this woman named Lucy who worked for her for 40 years, and my mom was like, “This is kind of crazy, but did you ever see my mom wearing a canary diamond?” And Lucy went into the broom closet and pulled down a shoe box. And in this shoe box that had crumpled newspaper in it was this ring, loose.
Now I’m like, what is the story behind this ring? She was married twice. My grandfather died when my mom was 16, so I never met him. And then her second husband, George, died on the same exact day as my grandfather. I mean, obviously, many years later.
You said your mom gave your husband the ring. Did he propose with this ring?
He didn’t. He ended up proposing with a ring that ended up not being the ring. This ring came into the picture later.
We were looking at my grandmother’s jewelry and he saw me trying this on, and I think my mom kind of put it together. She gave it to him, and he was like, “Do you want this to be just, we’ll just say that this was your engagement ring?” And I was like, “I do.”
How does it make you feel?
It gives me a lot of power. I’m a big believer in jewelry holding significance and magic. I also think jewelry can hold bad juju, bad feelings, as well. To me, my grandmother was a complicated person. She could be tricky, but she was a very powerful, independent woman. She lived through a lot of pain. My grandfather was a very well-known playwright, and she was the wife-of, and she had to be the sort of woman in her own right while also standing behind him during this very specific period in our history.
To me, the coolest part of my family legacy is that she created TKTS. She was such a firm believer in the magic of the arts and the magic of theater — and that it needed to be available to everyone, that it shouldn’t be available only to some. And so, even though as a grandma she could be tricky, I sort of live in awe of her as a woman.
Do you ever take it off?
I take it off. I don’t like to leave it at home, which is probably dumb, but I get separation anxiety. If I leave without it, I’m like, “Our house is getting robbed, and it’s the only thing they’re taking that I can’t replace.” I don’t know, maybe I am like Gollum, and it’s like, my Precious, I can’t part with it because I start to literally lose my power.
Do you ever think about who you would want to pass it down to?
I think it depends on what version of a child we have, and if they want it. I’m definitely going to be one of those old ladies who wears every piece of jewelry she owns every day, probably.
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