‘Girls’ Star Zosia Mamet Reveals the Mystery of Her Huge Canary Diamond Engagement Ring Found in Her Late Grandma’s Broom Closet

“Girls” star Zosia Mamet has opened the shoebox lid to a Netflix-worthy mystery surrounding the enormous gumball-sized canary diamond ring she now wears on her wedding finger. This reveals how the dazzling Christmas bauble was hidden away in a broom cupboard by her late grandmother, who only shared its existence when she was on her deathbed.

The ring, which now adorns Mamet’s left ring finger, along with the wedding ring she exchanged with her husband, Evan Jonigkeitduring their ceremony in 2016, remains shrouded in secrecy to this day, although the actress says this hasn’t stopped her from forming a close bond with the gem.

Speak with The New York Timesthe 37-year-old recalled how the ring was first unearthed, revealing that even her actress mother Lindsay Crousewas completely unaware of its existence until her own mother, Anna Erskine Crouseasked her to find it just days before she died in Manhattan at age 97.

‘My mother was there [my grandmother] one night, and at that point she was just in and out of brightness,” Mamet revealed. She woke up in the middle of the night, grabbed my mother and said, “Where’s my canary diamond?”

Mamet noted that no one in her family had ever seen her grandmother wear a canary diamond. So they asked Lucya woman who had worked for her grandmother for forty years – and who immediately knew which gem she meant.

‘Lucy went into the broom closet and brought down a shoebox. And in this shoebox with crumpled newspapers in it was this ring, loose,” the “Girls” actress explained.

But while the family had managed to track down the gem, but its origins remained much more elusive, with Mamet noting that her grandmother had been married twice in her life – but neither of her husbands were alive at the time to shed any light on the story behind the diamond.

Experts have told Mamet and her relatives that they believe the ring is “quite old” and dates back to the 1910s, largely due to a very unique design detail rarely seen in stones used in modern times.

“There’s also something crazy about it that’s very rare now; because they don’t really teach how to do this anymore because it’s so hard to do it without shattering the stone,” she said.

“If you look directly into it, there’s a little hole at the very bottom of the diamond where it turns into a little point, which they used to do because it sparkles more when light hits it.”

Ultimately, Mamet’s mother gave the ring to Evan to give to the actress, who revealed that it ultimately replaced the ring he gave her when he proposed.

“She gave it to him, and he said, ‘Do you want this to just… we’ll just say this was your engagement ring?’ And I was like, ‘Yes, I do,'” she revealed.

Mamet, whose father is a famous playwright David Mamet– noted that she believes the ring gives her “a lot of power,” noting that she is “a big believer” in jewelry that holds on to the feelings and achievements of its previous owners, both good and bad.

When it came to her grandmother, the actress described her as a “complicated person” who had “experienced a lot of pain” but who always maintained a sense of power and independence that Mamet now believes lives on in her ring.

Despite her “troublesome” side, Mamet said she is still “in awe” of her grandmother, who was credited with founding the budget-friendly Broadway ticketing service TKTS, which was created to provide a more affordable entry into the theater world.

At the time of her death, Anna was living in a three-bedroom apartment in Manhattan’s Lenox Hill neighborhood — a property that last sold for $5.5 million in 2014, a year after her death.

Mamet did not reveal whether this property was the location of the broom closet in which her mother discovered the ring.

However, the actress has largely turned away from city living, selling the Upper West Side apartment she shared with Jonigkeit for $1.2 million in 2022, three years after they listed it for $1.3 million.

The couple then focused on renovating a picturesque cabin in the Hudson Valley, which they purchased in 2014 as a fixer-upper project.

“It was a rough camping experience,” Jonigkeit said of the renovation in a 2019 interview with People. “We slept on a plywood subfloor. We didn’t have a refrigerator. We didn’t have electricity for a while.”

Records show the couple sold that property in 2022 for the sky-high price of $1.4 million — nearly triple what they paid for it eight years earlier.