Marcia Gay Harden (‘So Help Me Todd’) discusses the ‘screwball comedy sensibility’ of new legal series [Exclusive Video Interview]
“I think I loved the fact that it was a comedy,” reflect Marcia Gay Harden on what first drew her into the script for her CBS series “So Help Me Todd.” Even though the show seems like a legal procedural, its episodes are always threaded through with hijinks. “Even if Margaret is ostensibly serious, it’s because she’s serious about her work, but in life, her inabilities in life to master technology, her rigidness, and her vanity are really funny and her anger is really funny,” comments the actress about her character. Watch our exclusive video interview above.
“So Help Me Todd” centers on Harden’s Margaret, a powerful Portland, Oregon, attorney who hires her sharp but unorganized son Todd, played by Skylar Astin, to be her firm’s temporary, in-house investigator. “It’s not like anything I’ve ever done,” admits the Oscar winner, discussing how the show has a “screwball comedy sensibility,” “a whodunnit aspect,” and “real big family heart” all at once. It took the writers a couple of episodes to find the ideal tone, which comes through because creator Scott Prendergast has an “oddball sense of humor.” The entire cast and crew ultimately landed on a style that she describes as “grounded screwball.”
WATCH over 400 exclusive chats with 2023 Emmy contenders
Harden serves as a producer on “So Help Me Todd,” which is the first time she has held this title on a television series in her career. She sees the responsibility as an “honor,” one she takes “really seriously,” especially because she has “over 40 years of experience” to bring to the work. “I feel like the title producer earned me a place at the table, a chair at the table. Now it’s up to me to make sure I have good manners at the table,” elaborates the actress. She picked up one important insight when she worked on Joel Coen and Ethan Coen’s “Miller’s Crossing” that she continues to apply, revealing, “They never made you feel embarrassed about your creative instinct, your impulse, but they would slowly guide you into what they wanted.”
For “So Help Me Todd,” that translates into how Harden offers feedback on her scenes and on scripts. The Tony Award winner shares a story about production on episode 18, “Gloom and Boom,” a “really beautifully written, dark, much more serious” installment in which her character defends a Black man on death row and has to explain “the state of systemic racism in the prison” to a Black reporter. The actress voiced her concerns and discomfort about the scene of Margaret educating a Black woman about injustices affecting Black people and suggested changes for the “journey of this character.” For the producer, it is all about how to “kindly and generously and non-defensively and non-aggressively make it better, if you can, because everybody’s good and everybody’s fighting for the same thing.”
The success of the series hinges on the relationship between Margaret and Todd, and Harden says she developed a rapport with Astin instantly. From the premiere episode, the actress could “see the rhythm” between the mother and son on the page and shares, “Boy, he would throw the ball at me, and I would throw it right back.” The three-time Emmy nominee credits her scene partner as “super good with ad libs” and says they “trust each other” and “have our own language of things that work.”
The first season finale is certainly dramatic for Margaret, who on the heels of winning a case stands up for herself against named partner Beverly (Leslie Silva), threatening to leave and start her own law firm if her contributions are not recognized. Margaret does receive the promotion to named partner that she has been coveting all season long as a result, but for Harden, the scene doesn’t necessarily play as triumphant: “While she ended up getting it, she had to kind of get ugly to get it, in a way. It sullied it a little bit, for me… Why do we need to get there, because she deserved it, so why did it have to be a mud-wrestling?” Margaret’s new position will undoubtedly play a major role in the upcoming second season.
Harden also starred in “Uncoupled” this season opposite Neil Patrick Harris and Tisha Campbell. Like Margaret in “Todd,” her character Claire in this comedy was recently left by her husband, which is just one of the similarities the actress sees between the roles. “They’re both very vain and the vanity of both of them, for me, is what makes them funny and fun, and they’re both slightly grand,” says the actress, continuing, “I think Margaret’s sillier, and I think Claire’s level of anger is a bit more ferocious. Claire’s more of a lion.”
PREDICT the 2023 Emmy nominations through July 12
Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?