CHICAGO — On the new CBS legal drama “So Help Me Todd,” Marcia Gay Harden plays a high-powered lawyer who hires her talented but aimless son (Skylar Astin) to work as her in-house investigator. Let the high jinks ensue. “What drew me was the comedy,” said Harden. “Solving the cases is fun, but because this particular genre falls closer to something like ‘Moonlighting’ than more hardcore shows, there’s a lightness to it and humor. And the relationship is so deliciously dysfunctional.”
Harden is known for everything from her Oscar-winning portrayal of the artist Lee Krasner in the 2000 biopic “Pollock,” to “Mystic River” to the Apple TV+ series “The Morning Show” and the Netflix series “Uncoupled.”
It’s one high point after another. When asked about a worst moment in her career, she recalled a memory that took place while she had a break filming “Pollock.”
My worst moment …
“I was shooting the film ‘Pollock,’ and Clint Eastwood was casting for ‘Space Cowboys’ and it was perfect timing because Ed (Harris, who starred as the artist Jackson Pollock) was taking a month off to gain weight for Pollack later in his life. So I had a month down when I could go and do the movie. Ed had worked with him before. So I said, ‘Oh my God, Ed, I really want to play this part,’ and he goes, ‘Yeah, I’ll give him a call.’
“So Ed calls Clint and I can hear the conversation. And Ed’s saying, ‘Yeah, she’s a good girl.’ And what he meant by that is, I’m not a diva. And that’s important to Clint as well.
“OK, cut to a week later, I’m going down to shoot ‘Space Cowboys.’ And my hair was still in my ‘Pollock’ haircut. (Harden’s hair was cut to resemble Krasner’s distinctive bob and short bangs.) And I thought I would go down and meet Clint and do hair, makeup and wardrobe. Well, I went down and did wardrobe but no hair and makeup because you basically have to have the ideas for yourself for a Clint Eastwood movie. I didn’t know that at the time.
“So I’m playing this space shuttle mission control person and I’m thinking they won’t want my little ‘Pollock’ bangs and my short haircut, they’re going to want me to look more professional or something. It’s not that the ‘Pollock’ hair wasn’t professional but it was so specific. I went in for a costume fitting but I was never called to go in for a wig fitting.
“So OK: This is what the hair is gonna be. And I thought, this is crazy, I look like Lee Krasner! So I was already a little insecure because I’m thinking, is this what you want, Mr. Eastwood, my hair looking like Lee Krasner from the 1950s?
“I still haven’t met Clint. And here’s the background: I grew up as a Navy brat. I grew up in Japan and we watched almost no television. We weren’t really that kind of family that sat around the TV but we did watch ‘Rawhide.’ And he was Rowdy Yates. We were all in love with him, all of my sisters and me. So I had this whole thing about Clint in my head.
“So now on the first day of shooting, I’m sitting down and getting my hair done and Clint comes in at the opposite end of the trailer. And slowly but surely, he makes his way down, saying hello to people. And it’s like they’re all family, he’s known them for years.
“I’m in the last chair. And I went into a silent panic — kind of interior frothing going on — that when he finally approached, I lurched out of my chair and threw myself at him and hugged him, which garnered all the looks from everybody in the trailer. And then in the highest pitch voice — and you know my voice is not high-pitched — I said, ‘Hi!’ And started laughing. ‘I’m in your movie!’ I said that because he seemed so stunned. And he said, in his beautiful low voice: ‘Yeah, I know. I cast ya.’ And I continued to giggle and shriek.
“And then I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I lurched at him again and kissed him on the cheek. Which you don’t do. And again, all the heads are turning in the trailer. And I opened my mouth to say something and my limbic system came into full gear and I bit down hard on my tongue — and I bit a hole in my tongue. It was my brain telling me: Stop talking. And I sat back down. I’m telling you, I literally had a hole in my tongue.
“Now he leaves the trailer, they finish my hair and I go outside and say, with a lisp now: ‘Excuse me, Mr. Eastwood, but I just need to tell you I was so excited and nervous to meet you that I bit down on my tongue and now there’s a little hole in it. But I’m going to put some ice on it so it’ll be OK, but I just wanted you to know that.” And just he just looks at me. And I am dying. My tongue was so swollen it sounded like ‘thowllen.’
“So I have a mouthful of blood. I put ice on my tongue and it stops bleeding, but it’s swollen and I couldn’t really talk normally.
“I go to set and everyone’s ready. And Clint goes, ‘Hey, Marcia. We got a call from the studio. They’ve changed your line from ‘We’ve gotta get back to Houston’ to ‘We have to get back to Space Shuttle Mission Control.’
“So the camera is rolling. OK, go. And I say (jumbled version of the line). And he’s like: ‘Try it again.’ And the louder I tried to do it, the worse it got.
“And finally he stopped and he said, ‘You can just say ‘‘We have to get back to Houston,” Marcia.’ And everybody is laughing. He’d played a joke on me. It was all a prank because he knew my tongue was swollen and saying a mouthful like ‘space shuttle mission control’ would be impossible.”
What was going through Harden’s mind as this was happening?
“I was mortified before I knew it was a prank. I was mortified that I couldn’t do my job. Film is so public and people see you making a mistake. People see you not capable. People see you flop sweating because you can’t do it.
“I’m thinking I’m going to be fired after I said one line. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t say the line. And I was worried people would think I was that person — the unprepared actor. Why did you get hired?
“Once I realized it was a joke, I felt such relief. I was laughing and I knew immediately that we were friends and that he’s just silly sometimes. He wasn’t doing it to be mean. You can tell, there are pranks people play to be mean and there are pranks people play that are all in fun. This was all in fun.
“He was taking the air out of my nervousness and idolizing him, and it alleviated the tension. I’ve seen it happen in the reverse, when someone comes to set and they only know of me, and suddenly they can’t remember their lines, they’re so nervous and something happens in their brains where they lose themselves. And that was what that moment was for me. You lose yourself.
“And because I wasn’t in character yet, I couldn’t rely on the character to pull me through. I was myself in that chair meeting my childhood idol and I lost it in that high-pitched squeaky voice, giggling and laughing.”
The takeaway …
“Be prepared. Be creative. Trust that you can offer your ideas to a director. If you’re already insecure about what your look is, you need to bring it up beforehand.
“You need to call the hair and makeup people and say, ‘My hair is in a really specific place.’ Like, I knew before going in that it wasn’t the look I needed. You have to give yourself permission to be a co-creator of your character. You can’t just expect to show up and the conversations are going to happen. Usually, they do, but that didn’t happen this time. I should have picked up the phone and said, ‘Hey, you guys should know what my hair looks like. We should do something with it.’
“So from that job on, I’ve never not had a prior conversation with hair and makeup and sharing looks and pictures. I mean, it’s not wrong that someone running the space shuttle mission control had that hair, it just made me feel like it wasn’t right for the character.
“And as far as being starstruck, you just can’t help it. All you can do is breathe.
“I would have loved it if my voice hadn’t gone up like that. And I would say, maybe don’t lurch at someone and hug them. Certainly don’t lurch and kiss them.”
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(Nina Metz is a Chicago Tribune critic.)
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