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Actress Melora Hardin is going up against Robert Downey, Jr.’s McNeal. In the play of the same name, The Office star plays Francine Blake, the retired editor-in-chief of The New York Times and McNeal’s former lover.
“She’s really the one person that can really go toe-to-toe with him and kind of tell it like it is,” Hardin explained on a recent visit to Good Morning America. The play addresses the rising use of Artificial intelligence and Hardin’s character serves as a counterpoint to McNeal. “She’s going to confront the lies [of A.I.] and give it to him but she also has a lot of heart so she also throws him a line.”
Also in the interview, the performer contrasted the differences between performing on stage as opposed to onscreen: “They are both so different and so much fun,” adding that this production in particular is a “bucket list item.” Watch the interview!
McNEAL, the new play by Ayad Akhtar and directed by Bartlett Sher, is currently playing a limited engagement through Sunday, November 24 only at the Vivian Beaumont Theater.
The cast features Academy Award-winner Robert Downey Jr., Brittany Bellizeare, Rafi Gavron, Melora Hardin, Andrea Martin, Ruthie Ann Miles, and Saisha Talwar.
Good writers borrow, great writers steal. Jacob McNeal (Robert Downey Jr.) is a great writer, one of our greatest, a perpetual candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. But McNeal also has an estranged son, a new novel, old axes to grind and an unhealthy fascination with Artificial Intelligence. Pulitzer Prize-winner Ayad Akhtar’s new play is a startling and wickedly smart examination of the inescapable humanity – and increasing inhumanity – of the stories we tell.
