INTERVIEW: Mary McDonnell joins arm in arm with Gloria Steinem at McCarter

Photo: Gloria: A Life stars Mary McDonnell as Gloria Steinem. Photo courtesy of the McCarter / Provided by website.

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Celebrated actor Mary McDonnell, known for her memorable turns in TV and film, has completed a professional 360 by rejoining with a theatrical muse from her early days acting on stage. That creative partner is Emily Mann, artistic director of McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, New Jersey.

For Mann’s 30th and final year of programming, McCarter is presenting a special run of performances of her new play about Gloria Steinem. Gloria: A Life, which previously played in New York City under Diane Paulus’ direction, continues through Oct. 6 with McDonnell in the title role.

The two-hour show replays the many highlights of Steinem’s influential career, including her days as a journalist in a man’s world, the finding of her feminist voice, the launching of Ms. magazine, the coordination of a global movement for women’s rights and the continued impact her message has on individuals and communities.

In Act II of Gloria: A Life, the audience and actors are able to enter a talking circle and discuss their reactions to the historical drama. At a recent performance, touching commentary was offered by women who lived through the early marches for equality, and younger women who have recently experienced the #MeToo movement as a societal reckoning.

“It’s a true engagement,” McDonnell said in a recent phone interview. “It’s very different from doing a play with the fourth wall. It’s very immediate, so it has this feeling of both joy and urgency that I quite like. I’ve been loving it actually.”

McDonnell grew up in the era of Steinem’s influence. The actor remembers even purchasing a pair of large glasses, much like Steinem would wear.

“I was so impressed with her and what she was saying and what she was up against, so I had grown up knowing a lot about Gloria Steinem,” said McDonnell, known for Major Crimes and Battlestar Galactica. “I obviously read Ms., but when I did this play and I started to really learn about Gloria’s personal life and about some of the things that Gloria and Emily and Diane Paulus have chosen to reveal in this, vis-a-vis Gloria’s life, I think it was just so stunning to me to understand some of the difficulties this woman actually faced. And none of us had a clue, and that was quite enlightening.”

Presenting Gloria: A Life in 2019 is particularly poignant. The #MeToo movement continues to influence society and expose generations of abuse, discrimination and harassment in multiple professions. The administration of President Donald Trump has inspired national marches for women’s rights, while states and political groups continue to battle on several different issues, involving everything from abortion to equal pay.

Steinem’s influence is still relevant, perhaps even more so than those iconic speeches in the 1960s and 1970s.

“There is something about this moment in our country and the fact that Gloria is choosing to put everything she’s got out there,” McDonnell said. “And she’s choosing to reach back and get connected to the youth activists. She invites them to come up. She meets with them. She’s trying to give them as much information as she possibly can because they need the perspective, so I think there is something really remarkable about her story in this particular moment. I also think her story at this point in our culture for men is quite beautiful because men have evolved with women — not all men, not all women — but there is a different consciousness about sexism in certain areas. And so this play is highly supportive of that evolution.”

The actor added: “I think feminist is one of the better words I would associate with my life. Yes, 100 percent.”

Watching Gloria: A Life, one realizes how the movement for women’s rights intersects with civil rights, gay rights and peace protests. One of the themes of the drama is that siloing is an outdated concept when talking about social upheaval.

“Gloria says in the play, ‘We can’t keep putting movements into silos. They’re all deeply connected,’ and I think what we are finally seeing is people on the planet making the connection that sexism and racism and climate change, at the core what they have is life, equality, opportunity to live beautiful lives on this particular planet,” McDonnell said. “They’re all the same movement, and for the first time in my life, I’m seeing the intersectionality. And I’m seeing people understanding that whatever day you choose to march, whatever moment you’re marching in, if you look around at the signs that people are carrying in the protests, the signs are about everything. They’re about humanity, and it’s global. Feminism simply means equality between the sexes, equality for humans, but if you grow up as a feminist and you’re an activist on the level of Gloria, you’ll have the opportunity to work with and be present for all those movements all over the world. And she has a marvelous way of pulling them together.”

In the play, for example, Steinem makes sure she supports the strong African-American women who are standing by her side, linked arm to arm, but facing very little respect from the mainstream media. Steinem wanted all women, no matter their race, ethnicity or cultural background, to receive a voice.

“I think there are some minds being changed,” McDonnell said of the audience at the McCarter. “You can also feel the surprise in the audience at certain moments, and the shock, and sometimes we hear afterward in the talking circle, there are a lot of minds, if perhaps not changed, certainly enlightened. … I’ve gotten a lot of letters already and run into people. People take very seriously at the end of this play about a kind of reckoning with whether or not they’re doing as much as they can to help humanity at this particular crisis moment, so something is happening in that room every night that seems to be supportive of forward movement, for sure. And people seem to have a lot of love in their hearts when they leave, and that’s the most important thing to me.”

McDonnell’s career has taken her from the stages of New York City to the television screens in audience’s living rooms to one-of-a-kind roles in Hollywood, including her Oscar-nominated performances in Passion Fish and Dancing With Wolves. She believes acting on stage and acting in film/TV rely on the same creativity, but different muscles depending on the performance.

“The creativity, the part of you that creates a character … that’s the same no matter what, and there is a different performance muscle that is called upon on the stage,” she said. “It’s far more athletic. It’s far more verbally challenging. In this particular role, I had to work very, very, very hard on making sure I could stand on a stage for an hour and a half and speak almost the entire time and know what I had to say next. That’s different than film and television. You don’t have to exercise your memory in the same way, and I’ve loved it. I’ve absolutely loved the exercise of being pushed that way.”

Over the years, McDonnell’s dedication to her artistic craft has resulted in the portrayal of many strong women, especially when considering her TV work in Battlestar and Major Crimes.

“I’d say it’s a combination of me selecting certain things, but also more actors would say, I think if they were talking honestly, the projects find you,” she said. “You don’t go out and say I’m only going to play strong women, so send me all of those. You suddenly have them. They’re in front of you asking you if you would like to address that particular character or that particular character, so it’s turned out most of the asks in my career have been to play women who carry a certain amount of strength and imperfection and kind of seem to have quite a connection to all kinds of women in the culture. And I didn’t plan that. Do you know what I’m saying. It evolved over many years, but when I look back at myself as a young actor, I don’t think I ever, ever fit into the role of the ingénue. So as I’ve got older, my parts just get better.”

There is perhaps no stronger character on McDonnell’s résumé than President Laura Roslin from Battlestar, routinely considered by critics and fans as one of the best science-fiction TV shows of all time (and likely one of the best, no matter the genre, period).

“I’m actually not amazed, and I hope that doesn’t sound too arrogant,” McDonnell said of the character’s continued influence. “That pilot came to me, and I was shocked. I was at lunch, and my agents came in to meet me and said you have an offer for this new Battlestar Galactica. I never saw it in the ’80s because I was a theater person in New York. I didn’t have a TV, and I worked at night. So it wasn’t part of my life, but I knew something about it. I thought, for me? Battlestar Galactica? It didn’t make any sense whatsoever, and they said, ‘Well, apparently it’s a little bit different than the original.’ And so I went home that night and read it, and I knew it. I just knew this is profoundly important, and this is simply the pilot.”

McDonnell so appreciated what Ron Moore had done with the series and in particular her character of Roslin, who is the secretary of education with a teaching background. In the miniseries that launched the TV show, Roslin assumes the presidency after a horrible tragedy kills numerous government officials. She essentially becomes the leader of the free world, and she also has been recently diagnosed with terminal cancer.

“[Moore’s] right in the zeitgeist of where we are on this planet and in the universe, and he understands politics,” she said. “And he understands women, and he understands men. And he understands space, and he understands science. … Listen, we are aching for women leaders on the planet, so we’re just aching for them everywhere. We have to have them in positions of power. Men want it. Women want it. Children want it. It would be good for the world, so to have this one woman come out ahead of the game and be so good at it while being so flawed and be a normal human being who has a really steep learning curve, how very, very, very exciting to people.”

McDonnell added: “I think she still is [influential] because now we are seeing people who are unexpectedly appearing to run for office that are not coming from traditional political leadership backgrounds or government backgrounds. Laura Roslin’s background is in education, and she grew into understanding the importance of making choices that were about survival of the planet. That’s where we are now, so I think that’s one of the reasons she still resonates. And I just happen to be lucky enough to have her words in my hands.”

One could almost imagine a book by Steinem appearing in Roslin’s living quarters. Certainly one could imagine a Steinem book appearing in McDonnell’s place in Princeton, where Gloria: A Life has been playing for the past month.

“I’m loving every second of living in Princeton,” she said. “I’m like, hmm, I don’t know if I’ll ever retire, but this looks good. It’s so beautiful. There’s so much going on here. There’s so much art, creativity and ideas. It is pretty impressive. People have been extraordinarily kind, and being at the McCarter has been a gift. Obviously being rejoined with Emily Mann is one of the great happy accidents of my life. I’ve been very happy here.”

The experience of being at the McCarter and performing in this play will likely stay with McDonnell for quite a long time.

“I can’t tell you the impression that Gloria Steinem has made on me,” McDonnell said. “I’m not even going to understand what just happened to me for a while after this is over. The honor and privilege of being able to spend a couple of months really looking at life through the mind and heart of Gloria Steinem is really truly without a doubt one of the greatest gifts of my career, and I’m not sure yet how it will have changed me. I just know it has.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Gloria: A Life, starring Mary McDonnell, plays through Oct. 6 at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, New Jersey. Click here for more information and tickets.