Laura Linney has everything going for her. She has an incredible career that spans television, film, and theatre, she has a beautiful family and is aging like fine wine. I mean, can you even tell that she is sixty? She has a ton of prestigious awards to her name including two Golden Globe awards and 4 Primetime Emmy awards. Needless to say, she is one of the finest actresses in today’s time.
However, there was a point in her life when Laura Linney believed that her career was nearing its end. This happened when she was a part of a production of The Seagull at the Lyceum Theater. While the play is a classic, the production was horrible and Laura Linney knew it all too well. While recalling her time in the Broadway play, the actress revealed how she actually ended up trauma bonding with co-actor Ethan Hawke.
Laura Linney Recalls Her Time on The Seagull
Written by Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov in 1895, The Seagull tells the story of a group of artists and focuses on love, fame, and unfulfilled potential. In Lyceum Theater’s production of the classic play, Lauren Linney plays the role of Nina Zarechnaya and Ethan Hawke plays Konstantin Treplev.
During a recent appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Linney opened up about her time on the Broadway play, and let’s just say she still seems a little traumatized. When Jimmy Fallon asked her if she remembers any of her first times on Broadway, Linney couldn’t keep her feelings inside. Bursting into laughter, the actress described the time as “really bad.”
She got into the story of her time on The Seagull when she and Ethan Hawke were just in their twenties. She held no punches back as she went ahead to call it the worst production of The Seagull “known to man.”
Linney stated,
“We were in the worst production of ‘The Seagull’ known to man. I mean, it was painfully bad. From the minute it started to the minute it ended.”
When asked if she knew if the play was not good right from the get-go, she stated that it was “impossible not to know.” She further elaborated,
“Everything was wrong…it ran forever…It was a nightmare. It was torture. And every category – the casting was off, the set looked like a ride at Disneyland. It looked like the Peter Pan ride. The sound, like the crickets in the background – I mean, everything was off about it.”
She then recalled how she and Hawke trauma-bonded over the whole thing.
“Ethan and I, we just – somehow we got through that. So, we were bonded through trauma.”
The Ozark actress then went on to state that after The Seagull she somehow got herself into two other “really bad” productions and still considers it a miracle that her career was able to survive that.
Ethan Hawke Shares the Brutal Review He Received for the Play
During his appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Hawke got candid about the awful review he got from The New York Times which made his confidence plummet to its death. Hawke revealed how he, just like any other actor, fantasized about the positive reviews coming his way.
“You fantasize in your head. You can’t help it. You know you’re not supposed to be results oriented, you want to share and express yourself, but you do think, maybe people will think I’m great, you know?”
The Purge actor continued talking about how he would feel so confident during rehearsals and how his mother’s compliments also played a huge role in boosting his sureness about his performance. However, things changed when TNYT dropped its review of The Seagull.
Hawke recalled the publication wrote something along the lines of,
“Ethan Hawke plays Konstantin more concerned with his pimples than his poetry. Perhaps he should spend less time at the Actors Studio and more at the dermatologist.’”
While this line was nowhere to be seen in the review posted on the Internet, it did call out Hawke for his “unfocused nervous energy.” It looks like neither Linney nor Hawke have good memories from their time in the play.
