I recognize that it’s the highest honor an actor can receive, and that is what has sunk in for me. You’ve had a little time to get used to being a 2009 Tony nominee.
Carnage allows Harden to display both sides of her prodigious talent: Though she’s best known for dramatic roles Pollock, Mystic River, plus a Tony-nominated performance as Harper in Angels in America, Harden has taken on comedic roles in movies like Welcome to Mooseport, American Dreamz and Drew Barrymore’s upcoming Whip It! For now, she is savoring her nomination for the acting award she feels is the most prestigious of them all. It’s a happier domestic scene than the one portrayed in Yasmina Reza’s Tony-nominated comedy, in which Harden, James Gandolfini, Hope Davis and Jeff Daniels have it out quite literally after their children get into a playground fight. “Go take a picture of your ballerina while Mommy has a phone call,” she whispers to Julitta, who obeys, chattering as she goes. Speaking from her home in Harlem, the Oscar-winning Broadway star is obviously an experienced juggler, balancing her busy acting career with raising Julitta, twin brother Hudson, and their 10-year-old sister, budding actress Eulala Scheel. Newly minted Tony nominee Marcia Gay Harden is delighted to chat about her hit play, God of Carnage, but first she has to help her five-year-old daughter, Julitta, finish making a ballerina doll.
