Citizens of Mockingbird: Neal Huff on Digging Deep as the 'Incredibly Surprising' Link Deas

In adapting Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird for the stage, award-winning scribe Aaron Sorkin looked at the iconic characters of the recently named "best-loved" American novel with fresh eyes. In this exclusive series, Broadway.com talks with Sorkin and the talented performers who bring the citizens of Maycomb, Alabama to life every night at the Shubert Theatre.

NEAL HUFF AS LINK DEAS
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CHARACTER: Link Deas is a mysterious cotton farmer and close friend of Tom Robinson who is brought into the spotlight as a witness for his rape trial.

ACTOR: Neal Huff has been a steadily working stage-and-screen actor for 25 years. He made his Broadway debut in The Tempest in 1995, appeared in The Lion in Winter in 1999, had a memorable turn in the original cast of the Tony-winning play Take Me Out in 2003 and was seen in last season's acclaimed The Iceman Cometh. He also appears off-Broadway regularly and has many notable film and TV credits, including The Wire, John Adams, Damages, Law & Order, Moonrise Kingdom, Blue Bloods, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Billions, The Blacklist, Spotlight, The Affair, Girls, Split and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

NEAL HUFF ON PLAYING LINK DEAS: "Link Deas is an incredibly surprising character. You think he's one thing and then you see something else. That's what I love. The character is all about surprise. And all the themes of the story cut through this man's heart."

AARON SORKIN ON NEAL HUFF: "Neal Huff as Link Deas just shows you what heartbreak looks like. He's got a map of the world on his face."

Photographed at the Shubert Theatre by Caitlin McNaney for Broadway.com