Little Bear Ridge Road Star Laurie Metcalf on Character Work, College Memories and Death of a Salesman

The ferociously talented Laurie Metcalf may be a celebrated film and television actress, but her commitment to theater has made her one of Broadway’s boldest mainstays. This season, the two-time Tony winner stars in Little Bear Ridge Road at the Booth Theatre, a work she and director Joe Mantello commissioned from playwright Samuel D. Hunter. After Little Bear closes on December 21, Metcalf will get to work on a buzzy revival of Death of a Salesman alongside renaissance man Nathan Lane. Broadway.com Editor-in-Chief Paul Wontorek spoke to Metcalf about her rehearsal process, how she gets into character and her relationship to make-believe.

From her Oscar-nominated performance as Saoirse Ronan’s prickly but well-meaning mother in Lady Bird to an Emmy winning run as the downtrodden Jackie on Roseanne (a role she reprised on the show’s spin-off The Conners), Metcalf has a knack for toggling comedy with tragic flourishes of vulnerability. This is present in Little Bear, where she plays Sarah, a hard-edged nurse who reunites with her estranged nephew as the two of them prepare to sell her late brother’s estate.

Metcalf’s performances have a lived-in quality to them, which is honed by the time she spends fleshing out her character’s interior worlds. “I daydream about it. That's kind of how I start out, just sort of walking down the street and talking to myself and daydreaming, even before rehearsals start. And then in rehearsals, I start to look more and more like a crazy woman walking down the street because I’m running the lines and acting it out. I don't know what the hell I look like.” Her vivid characterizations are also shaped by a keen sense of observation, with Metcalf remarking, “If I see somebody with an interesting characteristic, I note it and think, 'Oh, that would be perfect to have on stage at some point.' Whether it's a walk or a talk or a mannerism, I try to take note of those kind of things.”

Metcalf’s naturalism is well-suited for Hunter’s no-frills dialogue, which she says, “Comes off the page so easily in an actor's mouth. It just lends itself to wanting to be said out loud.” Speaking on Hunter’s approach to storytelling, Metcalf says, “I think at the very beginning, there's a learning curve for the audience. It starts off very, very small and tiny. These people aren't talking very much to each other. They seem to butt heads right away. You're not sure what the relationship is. And then Sam drops in little pieces of information. So you work out who they are to each other. Then you work out why they've been estranged for so long.”

Metcalf likens this to “detective work” on the audience's part, which extends to the play’s largely barren stage, “Basically we have a couch, but there are multiple locations. And so with very minimal couch movement, the couch has a little personality all of its own,” notes Metcalf. “You move into different locations, but I think the audience is able to supply that with their imagination."

The process of discovery is something Metcalf values as an actor. “I love nothing better than a rehearsal room with a great cast, great director and figuring out what is the best way to tell this story as a group and bring as many surprises to the audience as we can, which I hope will translate into Salesman also.”

Metcalf will be reteaming with Mantello for the highly-anticipated revival of Arthur Miller’s landmark drama, which is set to begin previews March 6, 2026 at the Winter Garden Theatre. Metcalf has been in talks to play long-suffering homemaker Linda Loman for 10 years and has purposely chosen not to attend any of the previous Broadway productions—the show has had five Broadway revivals since its premiere in 1949. “If I think for some reason down the line I might be playing an iconic part, I don't go see it. I never saw [Who’s Afraid of] Virginia Woolf?,” she says, referring to Edward Albee‘s scorching marital quartet. (Metcalf starred as Martha in a 2020 Broadway revival, but the production was cancelled after nine preview performances due to the onset of COVID.)

Before Metcalf was an above-the-marquee star on Broadway, she was a theater student at Illinois State University, studying acting with the likes of John Malkovich, Gary Sinise, Jeff Perry, Glenn Headley and Joan Allen, among others. She describes this impressive roster as, “A bunch of kids with a like-minded sense of humor who just wanted to make each other laugh.” Reflecting on her theatrical education, Metcalf says, “We weren't always playing characters that we were right for because we were all the same age and there were no plays for a bunch of 23 year-olds or whatever it was. So people were having to play younger and older and those stipulations on us made us think outside the box of certain characters. I think that was a little bit of a growing curve for us that was unintended.”

Though her days of "shoestring" college theater are behind her, Metcalf's outlook remains the same. “It's always loving the challenge of it. It's for the audience, and you want to give them the best show that you can possibly figure out, full of surprises, full of humor, full of heartbreak,” she says. “That to me is what it's all about and what everybody should be on the same page striving to do.”

Watch the full interview in the video below.

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