Video: Inside Opening Night of MARY JANE, Starring Rachel McAdams

I don't know where I am yet, but maybe in the summer I'll think back and go

Oh. Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World. Academy Award nominee Rachel McAdams is making her Broadway debut in Amy Hursog's play Mary Jane

which is directed by Annie Kaufman, and I caught up with a company just minutes after their opening night curtain rang down

It's just been a world win for you. We spoke very early on, I think it was like your third day of rehearsal

This is all so new for you, and you are now officially a stage animal

And I love that. What have you enjoyed the most about working on this

What's made it so special? For me, it's been the people I've been working with the amazing cast of women that I get to go to play with every day

They're all incredible and kind and patient with me. And we've learned so much since I saw you last

I mean, it's been like a whole lifetime has been lived in, you know, a matter of months

So, yeah, I feel like a different person from when I met you last

Yeah, yeah. It's always such a gift to have the writer in the room with you, you know, to be able to ask questions, you know, what exactly is this and what was this meant to be

And her and Annie works so closely together as a team. so it's a really well-oiled machine and there's so much warmth and collaboration in it and

yeah I couldn't have asked for more yeah yeah and just what you're enjoying the most about

being on Broadway and just doing theater what is meant to you It such a living breathing thing It changes every night and I never quite know what coming my way and there

just something so alive about that. So I feel like I've really become quick on my feet and

and learn to be in the moment more than ever before. So, yeah, and you just find each other as a family and a team every night, and there's just something so beautiful about all working towards the same goal, which is a really important one, I think, in terms of telling this story

And we all just get in there and there's no ego, and, you know, we just let it fly and see how it goes

What's made Mary Jane so special for you? It's a personal story, and the Amy Herzog is just a beautiful

beautiful, beautiful playwright. And Annie Kaufman is someone I've admired for a really long time

And for this to be the project that marries all of us is just a beautiful experience

It's the best use of my intellect and my heart. And it's teaching me some life stuff about how to show up for people in a way that's real

And I, there's just no limit to what I could. learn I could run this play for seven years and still find stuff in it

What's made this so special? You've worked on so many beautiful shows with so many

beautiful companies What made this so special Amy text Amy play It is I think more necessary now in some way than it has been for years because of what we all have been through as a community and as you know a couple or alone

What we've been through is very present in this and it has heart and it has warmth

and it's about celebrating, I think, the care that we have for one another as human beings

Well, this has been special because I started with the play in 2017 at New York Theatre Workshop

the incredible artistic director there, Jim Nicola. You know, he took a, not a huge risk because we all know that Amy is an incredible talent

but he took a risk on the play and it really paid off

And I didn't know that it would come back, let alone come back to Broadway

and that I would still be a part of the storytelling. I'm so grateful, you know

The story itself lends its... to all of us taking care of each other

So the community that we built so quickly, I think when we first talked about Mary Jane

we were only a few days in, and we already felt like such a tight-knit squad, like a family

And yeah, that's what I'm carrying with me through all this. I want to talk about your dynamite cast you put together for this production

especially with Rachel McAdams, who I just call a stage animal now

I mean, it's going to be in her DNA forever. what it's been like having her in the room and the other cast members

I mean, having her in the room is just incredibly easy because she's the most collaborative, kindest, most generous soul that there is

And so it just felt from the beginning like she one of our cast and she is Mary Jane and she brought this beautiful spirit And having the other cast members in the show who have done the show before what that meant you sort of blending the cast

Yeah, well, yeah, so we had Brenda Wheel and Susie Porfar, who did the play with us at New York Theatre Workshop

who were absolutely incredible. And then these two brilliant new women, Lily Santiago and April Mathis

And I'm sure it was a credit to Annie. They all just cohered immediately

there was no sense of like the last production and this, you know, we were making something

we were making a new production for this much bigger theater and with a different Mary Jane

and it was just a like warm, lovely group of women who cared about the story they were telling

Annie, for you working with Rachel McAdams, introducing her to the stage, and working with this cast

You know, I will have to say, we have never had the same cast in all three productions

and I feel like there's something really magical about this, play and it sort of invites all sorts of women into the fold and so it feels like a continuation

of the previous productions and at the same time totally totally new rachel it's i mean it's

what amy said she is mary jane it was like she she was part of our family immediately um we

she made us a family i think of sisters and including uh the rest of the cast i mean the rest of the

is just everyone, I mean, you credited me, but I have to credit the play. I mean, it's about women

taking care of women. I mean, there's, the conflict is not within the, within the play. It's

without, it's without, it's outside of the play. So it's just really, it's a, it's an incredible tool

actually, for people to come together