Zosia Mamet quit "one of the biggest shows on television" because of an "intense" showrunner.

The Girls actress recalled a tense confrontation very early in her career after playing a recurring role on an unnamed major TV show grew increasingly difficult because of the demands of a "spirited and opinionated" figure behind the scenes.

In an excerpt from her essay collection Does This Make Me Funny? published by The Hollywood Reporter, she wrote: "The show's creator and showrunner was an intense human.

"The showrunner wasn't always around, but when he was, the entire vibe of the set would change, as if a cold front had swept the soundstage. I never entirely understood why. He was definitely spirited and opinionated, but there's way worse than that in Hollywood. I had always thought there was maybe something I was missing. I was correct."

She recalled rehearsals for a scene where she had to remove photographs from an envelope and put them on a table.

She wrote: "We're rehearsing, I walk in, I go to take the photos out of the envelope, and the showrunner calls 'Cut.' Not the director of the episode, the showrunner. And we all look at each other like, 'Did somebody do something wrong?' We all thought the scene was going fine."

The 37-year-old actress claimed the showrunner slowly walked over and asked: "What the f*** are you doing?"

She continued: "He grabs my hand that's holding the manila envelope and he says, 'No! What the f*** are you doing with this! That's not how you take something out of an envelope! Do it again!'"

Zosia continued rehearsing the scene but claimed the showrunner continued to berate her, shouting out phrases including, "You're doing it wrong!," "How the f*** can you think that looks right at all?", "I don't understand -- when I cast you, you knew how to act," and "I'm honestly confused at how you can be so bad at this."

She wrote: "Eventually he gave up or got bored. But this lasted for about a half hour. And nobody stopped it. Everyone just stared at their shoes while he screamed at me."

They eventually got through rehearsal and shot the scene but when she left for the day, Zosia called her agents to quit the show.

She wrote: "I was supposed to do four more episodes that season, not including the one I was on, but I told them I didn't care what they had to do, I didn't care if the network sued me, I refused to go back on that set for one more day than I actually had to. I don't remember anything else about the rest of that shoot. I think I've blocked it out."

While Zosia didn't name the show or the people involved, fans speculated she was referring to Mad Men and Matthew Weiner.

She mentioned in the essay that her first episode was directed by one of the stars of the show, and her first appearance on Mad Men was helmed by John Slattery, who played Roger Stirling.

And her character Joyce's last appearance saw the photographer - a friend of Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) - show off some crime scene photographs.

Since Mad Men ended in 2015, Weinder has been accused of sexual harassment and workplace misconduct from his former personal assistant and writer Kater Gordon.

Fellow Mad Men scripter and consulting producer Marti Noxon later confirmed she believed Kater's claims and branded the showrunner an "emotional terrorist" who "can not help but create an atmosphere where everyone is constantly off guard and unsure where they stand."

Weiner has previously denied the claims.

He said at the time: "The allegations are not true, and [this] is a very important topic and a topic that I have devoted -- it has been an obsession of mine, in my work and in my life, for like 92 hours of the show; we wanted people to be having this conversation."