SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The biggest hit on Broadway today may be a show that is 77 years old. The latest production of Arthur Miller's "Death Of A Salesman" has received nine Tony nominations, including Nathan Lane for best leading actor as Willy Loman, the salesman who is way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And as his wife, Linda Loman, nominated for best feature actress is Laurie Metcalf.
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NATHAN LANE: (As Willy Loman) If only Biff would take this house and raise a family. Goodbye, Emily.
LAURIE METCALF: (As Linda Loman) Oh, no. Wait. Oh, I forgot. No. You're supposed to meet him for dinner.
LANE: (As Willy Loman) Me?
METCALF: (As Linda Loman) At Frank's Chophouse on 48th near 6th Avenue.
LANE: (As Willy Loman) Is that so? How about you?
METCALF: (As Linda Loman) No. It's just the three of you. They want to blow you to a big meal.
LANE: (As Willy Loman) You don't say. Who thought of that?
METCALF: (As Linda Loman) Biff.
SIMON: And Laurie Metcalf, the Tony- and Emmy-winning actress joins us in our studios in New York. Thank you so much for being with us.
METCALF: Of course. My pleasure.
SIMON: Is it intimidating to do a play so many people know and so many great actors and actresses have done before?
METCALF: Yes. What helps me is that I have not seen it performed on stage before, on purpose.
SIMON: On purpose because...
METCALF: Yeah. Well, it's a bucket-list role (laughter). And I didn't want to have somebody else's performance in mind. So anybody that I had seen at whatever age that I was would have stuck in my mind, I'm sure. But yes. Everybody, you know, if they're not that hooked into the play itself, they've probably read it in high school. So I keep forgetting - 77 years ago - how shocking parts of this play would have been to those audiences.
SIMON: Linda loves Willy unreservedly. She is his most ardent defender.
METCALF: Yes.
SIMON: Does he deserve that?
METCALF: Well, she defends him to a fault, clearly. She is very protective of him in the state that he's in and tries to hide it from the boys as long as she can. I try to go in making her not just the protector or the enabler of lies that go on in the house but also as a 50/50 partner with Willy. She has, truly, all the receipts, and she's keeping everything running. But there's a little moment that when we share that we have the mortgage paid off, you know, they basically shake hands on it.
SIMON: Linda, you, speak what is, I think, about the most oft-quoted line of the play and one of the most quoted lines in American theater. Attention must be paid.
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METCALF: (As Linda Loman) I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper, and he isn't the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him, so attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid.
SIMON: Is it intimidating to know that that's your line?
METCALF: Yes. Yes. Every night, I know it's coming up, and it's going to be out of my mouth in about three seconds. And there it is, and it went by, and now we're past - attention must be paid. If you had asked me what I would have predicted would be one of the - the famous line, it would not have been that. But I don't try to do something different with it just to be different. I try to use it in the same way as the lines leading up to it and the lines leading out of it, as a part of the bigger idea, even though I know people - as soon as they hear it, perk up and say, oh, that's that line.
SIMON: It's irresistible to note that you and Nathan Lane are probably best noted for comedy.
METCALF: Yeah.
SIMON: Do you ever look at each other and say, boy, when this is over, I want to make people laugh?
METCALF: I do want to do...
(LAUGHTER)
METCALF: ...I do want a comedy and - to do a comedy again, and I'd love to do it with him. We have a couple of moments that - there are some laughs sprinkled...
SIMON: Yeah.
METCALF: ...Throughout this. There are. But it's not, like, really fun. You know, we don't get to tear it up together.
SIMON: You grew up in Edwardsville, Illinois. I've read you initially majored in German at Illinois State University. How did you get to the theater?
METCALF: Well, I saw that if I didn't want to be a translator, that was pretty much a dead end for me. But there was something about translating that I was attracted to and just language itself. I met up with the other students that started Steppenwolf, 50 years ago now.
SIMON: This is John Malkovich, Jeff Perry, Gary Sinise.
METCALF: Terry Kinney. So that is the only reason I ended up majoring in theater, was because I was able to graduate a semester early and then run back and be with them up in Highland Park, where we were, you know, starting to...
SIMON: Suburb of Chicago...
METCALF: Yes.
SIMON: ...Where you started Steppenwolf. Yeah.
METCALF: ...Starting to act out of a little 88-seat church basement. Now, I also dabbled in anthropology a little bit. So in hindsight, I do like to think that acting brought both those things together in a way - language and then the study of behavior. And I became my own chimp...
(LAUGHTER)
METCALF: ...To study.
SIMON: Oh. All right. And I have to ask. John Malkovich, I mean, Gary Sinise, we ran through all the - what was in the water...
METCALF: Yeah.
SIMON: ...There in Normal, Illinois?
METCALF: Boy, if we knew. It's one of those lightning-in-a-bottle times. I think we all shared a sense of humor. That's definitely sure. We did share a work ethic. We all wanted to either make each other laugh or cry. We were having a lot of fun. It was a bit of a Peyton Place. Everybody was seeing everybody else. So it was very combustible, but we could put everything aside and make it all about the work. The problem was finding plays that we could do that had, you know, seven 23-year-olds in there. They don't...
SIMON: (Laughter).
METCALF: They are a few and far between.
SIMON: Doing "Death Of A Salesman" in 2026, what do you notice and appreciate about what Arthur Miller wrote back in 1949?
METCALF: I just see the struggle that the family is going through economically and a man whose job is being phased out - all the delusion that goes with someone who is brought up to never show a certain side of...
SIMON: Yeah.
METCALF: ...Yourself and that he's passing this down to his kids. The kids - Happy's take away at Willy's death is that he's going to show his death was not in vain, and he's going to come out No. 1 man. And he has been taught that you get that either by cheating, lying, embellishing - however you can. And Willy - also, it's that gnawing sorrow that a lot of people have now, like, where did I go wrong? What did I do wrong? I did everything right. Somebody explained it to me.
SIMON: So can you end a performance and just be done with it that night?
METCALF: I can.
SIMON: OK. 'Cause when my family and I saw the play, we couldn't.
(LAUGHTER)
METCALF: What does stay with me, though, it's a tense play to be in. I've never learned how to deal with it otherwise than to basically hold my breath and clench my shoulders. This show makes me very achy for real. And, you know, I come back refreshed on a Tuesday, and by Wednesday matinee, oh, it's back in the body again. There's a toll it takes. It's strange, and God knows what the emotional toll it's taking. But it's a hell of a story to tell.
SIMON: Laurie Metcalf - she stars alongside Nathan Lane in the current Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's "Death Of A Salesman" at the Winter Garden Theatre. Thank you so much for being with us.
METCALF: Thank you. Pleasure being here. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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