'Roseanne' is canceled, but Tony nominee Laurie Metcalf has other balls in the air

Jim Beckerman
NorthJersey

The abrupt downfall of the TV hit "Roseanne," which was canceled Tuesday after a controversial tweet by its star, Roseanne Barr, is not good news for her network, her fans or her supporting cast.

The good news is that Laurie Metcalf, who returned to her old role of Roseanne's sister, Jackie, in the revival of the 1980s-1990s sitcom, is a juggler. Even with that dropped ball, she still has plenty more in the air.

In this image released by ABC, Roseanne Barr, left, and Laurie Metcalf appear in a scene from the reboot of the popular comedy series "Roseanne." 18.4 million viewers tuned in for its premiere.

"I'm fortunate to be able to bounce around between film and theater and TV," Metcalf told The Record earlier this month, before ABC pulled the plug on "Roseanne."

Metcalf was nominated for an Oscar for her role in last year's "Lady Bird." And on June 10, you'll see her at the Tonys (8 p.m. CBS) — she was nominated as Best Actress in a Featured Role for her Broadway performance in Edward Albee's "Three Tall Women." The play is up for a total of six awards.

The "Roseanne" reboot had been controversial from the start — even before Roseanne Barr drove a stake through its heart. On Monday, she tweeted a message about Valerie Jarrett, an African-American woman who served as a senior adviser to President Barack Obama: "muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj." Barr apologized, but ABC canceled the show Tuesday morning, with the network's president of entertainment calling it "abhorrent."

Laurie Metcalf (Roseanne's sister, Jackie Harris): Laurie was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar this year for her role in "Lady Bird." She also starred in the short-lived comedy "The McCarthy"' and has a recurring role on "The Big Bang Theory" as Mary Cooper, Sheldon's devout Christian mother.

The show, whatever else it is, was a monster hit; 18.2 million viewers watched its premiere episode in March.

But from the beginning, critics knocked this redux of America's favorite blue-collar family for what they considered "dog-whistle" appeals to the Trump base. 

Metcalf didn't see it that way. Discussing Trump, she said, is not the same as endorsing him.

"I don't think the show is writing towards any sort of leanings politically," she says. "I think it's really balanced. I'm proud of the way the writers have shaped it. It's current, but it's also nostalgic."

'ROSEANNE':Can the 'Roseanne' reboot work, despite political plotline?

BARR TAPES PODCAST: Hollywood Reporter on Roseanne's emotional podcast with NJ rabbi

The new "Roseanne," which picked up some years after the old one left off, found an older Roseanne Conner still at odds with her sister, Jackie. Only now, Roseanne is a Trump supporter, and Jackie is a Hillary-ite (though she admits in Episode One that she "choked" and voted for Jill Stein).

Audiences, Metcalf said, seemed genuinely interested in this family, 25 years later.

"I knew people would be curious about it when it came out," Metcalf says. "And they saw, like, 'Oh, yeah, I still like this family. I like seeing the issues that they're dealing with.' Some are new, and some are the same as we were dealing with when it aired 30 years ago."

It was the new issues that were the problematic ones.

Roseanne herself muddied the waters. A Trump enthusiast off-screen, she appeared to have a personal relationship with the president, at least to the extent of talking by phone and exchanging support for each other's projects on Twitter.

Critics of Barr saw her as a Trump enabler. The president clearly saw her as an ally. "[The ratings] were unbelievable!" the president told a rally in Ohio in March. "Over 18 million people! And it was about us!"

Whatever the case, the cast never talked politics off-camera, Metcalf says.

"We're there for the work," she says. "And there's a lot of laughs on set. We're having a great time, a wonderful time, revisiting this show."

Story continues below gallery

Away from 'Roseanne,' a Tony nomination

If "Roseanne" had some audiences confused, that's nothing compared with "Three Tall Women."  Start with her character's name: B.

That's it. Just B.

"There's no names in the whole thing," Metcalf says. In the revival of Edward Albee's Pulitzer-winning 1991 play, she is B to Glenda Jackson's A and Alison Pill's C.

"We talk about other people in the play, like her husband, but no one is referred to by a name," she says.

Laurie Metcalf

On paper, B might not sound quite so resonant as some other Metcalf credits. Nora Helmer in Broadway's "A Doll's House, Part 2," for instance. Or Marion McPherson, Metcalf's Oscar-nominated performance in "Lady Bird." Or Mary Cooper, her recurring role on TV's "Big Bang Theory."

Nevertheless, B is the horse with no name that Metcalf is riding to the Tonys (her co-star Glenda Jackson is also up for an award).

"The stage is where I feel the most comfortable," Metcalf says. "I feel like I know my way around a stage better than in front of the camera."

If Metcalf is on a roll — and in multiple media — her writers and fellow actors deserve a lot of the credit, she says.

"The movie I did took off like a rocket, and again was well written and directed," she says. "The TV I've done is top of the charts because of the great writing and casts. 'A Doll's House Part 2' came my way, and it was a brilliant script and cast, and that one took off. And now 'Three Tall Women' — again, starting with a great script, and then throw in Joe Mantello, my favorite director, and then Glenda Jackson and Alison Pill. With that one, I just wanted to be in the room with those people."

EDWARD ALBEE:An Appreciation: Edward Albee (1928-2016)

CELEBRITY PRESIDENTS: Oprah for president? Here are other celebrities who waged presidential runs

The way people are noticing Metcalf now, you'd think she just entered the room.

In fact, Metcalf, an Illinois native, has been doing notable work for decades, starting in 1979 with Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company. From there, she segued into TV ("Saturday Night Live," "3rd Rock from the Sun," "Frasier," "Grey's Anatomy") and movies ("Desperately Seeking Susan," "JFK." "Uncle Buck," the "Toy Story" series). She already has a Tony, and three primetime Emmys. TV shows — successful ones like "Big Bang," anyway — give actors a unique luxury: the chance to delineate a character over many episodes and seasons.

"If you're lucky enough to be on a show that is going to run the length of time like that one did, the writers look for each actor's strengths and start writing towards them to reinforce them," she says. "And so you all come up with it together, really. You built the territory together."

Theater is different. Four weeks, from soup to nuts. And "Three Tall Women" is unusually nutty — par for the course for the late Edward Albee, author of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "A Delicate Balance."

In fact, it's so peculiar that Metcalf is hard-pressed to describe it. Especially since there are spoilers involved.

Glenda Jackson, Alison Pill and Laurie Metcalf in Edward Albee’s "Three Tall Women."

Suffice it to say, A, B, and C are the three tall women. One of them — A (Jackson) — is a wealthy, imperious 92-year-old lady. Another — B (Metcalf) — appears to be her middle-aged caretaker. And the third — C (Pill) — is her twentysomething lawyer's assistant.

But somewhere in the middle of the play, the relationship among the three starts to shift. It's all the more startling in this production (the play's first on Broadway) because Mantello, the director, has eliminated the intermission that Albee indicated in his script.

"It's fun for the audience to put together what has happened," Metcalf says. "It's written as two acts, but we do it as one act, so it does seem like kind of a miraculous thing when the change happens. … It's just kind of a remarkable moment for the audience to say, 'What just happened? Where are we now?' It's a very creative way they've found to put the acts together."

Email: beckerman@northjersey.com