Marcia Gay Harden Says Philip Seymour Hoffman Had Mike Nichols Apologize for Being Too Hard on Her

Marcia Gay Harden said that, years after starring in a New York production of “The Seagull” for Mike Nichols, the “Graduate” director apologized for being so hard on her because Philip Seymour Hoffman told him to.

Speaking with “Modern Family” star Jesse Tyler Ferguson in this week’s episode of his “Dinner’s On Me” podcast, Harden said that Nichols blamed her for everything that went wrong with the 2001 New York production.

Harden had just won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for “Pollock,” which meant she didn’t have to audition to join the cast, which included Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Natalie Portman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Stephen Spinella, Larry Pine, Deborah Monk and John Goodman.

The cast was “bonkers,” so Harden said she didn’t hesitate to say yes. “I had in my mind, my vain little mind, that Mike would see me and realize I was the new Meryl Streep. I just had in mind that he would love me and that he would find someone similar in spirit [and feel the same] passion that he had for Meryl.”

Unfortunately, Nichols decided that she was the show’s “guinea pig.” She explained to Ferguson, “It means that there’s one person who gets picked on, and when the show isn’t going to be successful, it’s going to be that person’s fault. And there’s nothing, no, no way that person can ever be successful.”

While Nichols treated Streep as “the reigning queen of that particular play,” Harden said that “it very quickly became clear that no matter what I did as Masha, it was the wrong thing to do.”