Laurie Metcalf Stars in Death of a Salesman and Big Mistakes, Reflecting on Career and Miscasting

Laurie Metcalf returned to Broadway in 2023 after a three-year hiatus due to the pandemic, starring in Death of a Salesman and appearing in the Netflix comedy Big Mistakes. She performs alongside Nathan Lane in Arthur Miller's 1949 play at the Winter Garden theater, a 1,600-seat venue where she uses a microphone onstage for the first time. Metcalf, a charter member of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater Company, has accumulated two Tony Awards, an Oscar nomination, and four Emmys over her 50-year career. She also opened in Samuel D. Hunter's Little Bear Ridge Road during the same Broadway season. In an interview with Vogue, Metcalf discussed avoiding previous productions of Death of a Salesman to approach the role fresh, her discomfort with cameras in film and TV, and experiences with miscasting, including in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which closed prematurely due to the pandemic. She highlighted collaborations with generational fans like Dan Levy and Samuel D. Hunter, noting their writing styles and her preference for theater's spontaneity. The production of Death of a Salesman was a long-held project by Lane and director Joe Mantello, with Metcalf joining about a decade ago.