Laurie Metcalfe’s 40-year acting career spans comedy, drama, television, film, and stage. However, she has one dream that she has not fulfilled yet.
“I’ve always wanted to do musicals,” Metcalf says. “But my range is only seven notes. It would have to be a very special part. I don’t know if it will happen in the future, but I think it’s very hectic to be in a musical.”
“I’m going to start expressing that,” she added with a laugh.
Metcalfe is currently on Broadway previewing Samuel D. Hunter’s Little Bear Ridge Road. The film is a family drama about a woman (Metcalf) who reunites with her estranged nephew (Micah Stock). The play, which opens at the Booth Theater on October 30th, marks Metcalfe’s seventh collaboration with director Joe Mantello.
“I’m a little tired, but this is my favorite place,” Metcalf, who won Tony Awards in 2017 and 2018 for “A Doll’s House, Part 2” and “Three Tall Women,” told me by phone on a recent Friday afternoon. “I have two previews and will be taking notes this afternoon. I’m fine-tuning it. This is my happy place.”
Laurie Metcalf and Micah Stock in “Little Bear Ridge Road.”
Photo: Julieta Cervantes
“Little Bear Ridge Road” follows the release of “Monster: The Ed Gein Story,” a Netflix series starring Charlie Hunnam as serial killer Ed Gein and Metcalfe as his overbearing, religiously fanatic mother Augusta Gane. After co-producers Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan approached her with the project, “I agreed to do it without even seeing the script,” Metcalf recalls.
The latest installment of Murphy’s Monster series focuses on Ed’s relationship with his mother and how her abusive behavior influenced his gruesome serial killing spree in the mid-1950s. “It’s a nature-nurture relationship, right?” Metcalfe said. “I think it goes both ways for him.”
One of the most powerful and disturbing scenes in the series is when Augusta reprimands the adult Ed, who stands in front of her completely naked. “I’m sitting in that chair looking at a grown man preaching like he’s a 7-year-old,” Metcalfe explains. “I don’t see him as a grown man, but I see him still under my care and the supervision of my illness. This is a mother-son educational experience. It’s simple, but it’s distorted. But mentally, it helped to see him like that.”
Metcalf has high praise for director Max Winkler. “Despite the subject matter and tone of the series, it was really fun on set,” she says. “It’s hard to imagine a job like that being fun, but that’s because it was so collaborative. Max is very open to accidents that can happen on set. He gave me things that we could do between takes, some he used, some he didn’t use. I really liked working that way. The work itself, despite how dark it was, was a great set.”
After finishing filming Monster and a week before returning to Broadway, Metcalfe wrapped up his next TV project, Big Mistakes, an eight-episode Netflix mob comedy about two brothers (Levi and Taylor Ortega) who get caught up in organized crime, starring Dan Levy and Rachel Sennott. Metcalf plays their mother.
“I read the pilot and immediately wrote a letter to my agent saying, ‘I 100% want to do this,'” said Metcalfe, who won three Emmys for his role on “Roseanne” and one for his guest role on “Hux.” “I realized how unique a 30-minute comedy can be with just one camera.”
I tell Metcalfe that I grew up in a mob neighborhood in Queens, New York. “You’re going to love this,” she says. “It was very, very interesting and very unexpected. I don’t think the audience will ever be able to anticipate what will happen.”
