Buried Child's Amy Madigan on Working with Hubby Ed Harris, Making Her London Stage Debut & Redefining Family Drama

Chicago-born actress and 1985 Oscar nominee (Twice in a Lifetime) Amy Madigan has done TV, film and stage and is now about to make her London theater debut in Sam Shepard’s 1978 play Buried Child, opposite her husband, Ed Harris, with whom Madigan recently performed the play in New York. With previews at Trafalgar Studios about to begin November 14, Madigan took some time to discuss crossing the Atlantic, acting opposite your partner, and the introduction into the profession of a third acting member of the family—namely, the couple’s daughter Lily.

How did it come to be that you are doing Buried Child in London?
Our director Scott [Elliott] did The Spoils over there and they kind of said to him, we would love to continue a relationship with you. For us to get to reattack the play and work with all these wonderful British actors is really a dream come true. I’ve worked in films and TV but never in the West End. I am so excited, and I hope other people will be.

What’s it like working once again with your husband, Ed Harris?
Well, you want to work with really great actors, and Ed’s a great actor. People ask whether we take the work home with us, but the point is, we just really like doing it. It works for us. We kind of have a shorthand with one another as you might imagine.

Didn’t you meet doing a play?
Yes, many years ago—a play by Edward Allen Baker [in 1981 at the Melrose Theatre in Los Angeles]. We discovered then that we really, really like working together, in which case why wouldn’t you want to do that?

Do you and Ed find yourselves consciously looking for things you can do together?
We do, yes. And when this came up, I just remember Scott Elliott calling almost two years ago and saying, “I love this play; would you guys like to do it?” That was an easy one. It’s how you sometimes hope things will turn out.

Do you have any sense of how Buried Child might play in London?
Sam Shepard, of course, lived in London for a while many years ago, and I get the feeling that theater people love the language in his plays. I also think by now that there’s a general appreciation of the play itself. We’re working on this with some very young actors and actresses and they all know Buried Child as this iconic American play.

Do you think it might seem an especially American piece of writing when seen in London?
That’s an interesting question. You know, I think [the play] really changed people’s ideas of what a family drama can be in America: it was as if Sam had reinvented it in some way. There’s love in this family, as well as secrets and betrayal and a lot else, but whatever else these characters are, they are a family. They are in this house.

How would you describe your character, Halie?
She’s the family matriarch—the sort of glue in this house. She’s the one in the end who knows what’s going to happen and that somehow or other they will continue. But what’s funny is that I’ve now worked on the play a lot, and I still don’t entirely know what it is. There’s something bottomless about it.

What about getting the British and American accents all to sound alike?
Except for a few stray vowel sounds here and there, these guys are great. I’ve got no worries about that. [The supporting cast includes Jeremy Irvine from the film War Horse and Game of Thrones’ Charlotte Hope.]

Is it difficult for you to both to uproot, however temporarily, to London?
It’s pretty easy. Our daughter Lily just graduated from Reed College in Oregon, so she’s away from home, and, as actors, being able to pack up and go is part and parcel of who we are: you just do it.

Is she following in her parents’ footsteps?
She is in fact!  She’s a really great stage performer. She was an English major and her expertise is Middle English: she loves language. She did the Sarah Kane play 4:48 Psychosis and we saw her do Mark Antony in Julius Caesar. At the moment, she’s trying to figure out where she wants to be—she might end up in London or Ireland.

When you’re not on stage, do you like to go to the theater?
Very much so. Ed was working in New York over the summer and I came out to visit and that is all we did. We went to the theater every night. We saw Jessica Lange in Long Day’s Journey into Night, and I was thrilled she got the Tony, and we saw Hamilton and were knocked out. I also loved The Humans—that was my favorite play of last year.

Was it especially interesting seeing Jessica in that part, since you were Stella to her Blanche on Broadway in 1992? We have stayed in touch since doing Streetcar and we’re friends, and I was aware that she had done [Long Day’s Journey] before in London. But what was so amazing was that she was doing it again, and talk about a family drama! I love that play and I was so excited to see Jessica, who was exquisite. I love listening to the language in that piece and being part of it.

Do you have other stuff coming up that we should mention?
I did an independent film musical; called Stuck, which I hope gets to play somewhere, and that was a lot of fun, and Ed has always got a million things he’s doing, including Westworld on HBO.

A film musical? Tell us more!
I was a musician for a long time; I love it, and I miss it a lot. That was back during the time in Chicago, where there were people like John Malkovich and Gary Sinise doing theater and music was my fulltime pursuit. But I don’t have the voice of a Broadway musical theater person or anything like that. No one is knocking down the door to get me into a musical.

Really—not even a different kind of musical?
I think I’d need someone like Lin-Manuel Miranda to find something for me. Oh my God, wouldn’t that be a nice thing?