Broadway Power Couple Takes to the North; Audra and Will in Westchester
By: BWW News Desk May. 16, 2014
Broadway power couple Audra McDonald and Will Swenson were featured in the Real Estate section of yesterday's New York Times talking about their home in Westchester.
The profile reveals an intimate, behind-the-scenes portrait of the stars and their lives together, starting with McDonald feeling the need to leave New York City after 9/11 and discovering "a mid-'60s clapboard wreck" with "a level backyard", where she, her then-husband (they are now divorced), and their daughter Zoe, decided to plant their roots.
"It just felt like a cozy, secure place," McDonald told the Times.
Read the full story here.
According to the article, McDonald made many improvements over the years -- a pool, expansions to the kitchen, bathrooms and windows, built-in bookshelves, repurposed slate tiles, skylights, a window seat in the master bedroom and more -- before she met Swenson in 2007 when they both starred in 110 IN THE SHADE.
Swenson has inspired new changes to the home since their marriage a year and a half ago, including red walls in the family room and what the couple deems "the cocaine couch", explaining that "once you sink into it you don't want to get up".
The duo bought the house next door when its owner died and are fixing it up for McDonald's mother. They also purchased and tore down another neighboring home to create an outdoor living room, where they were married in 2012.
Another gem from the article: McDonald says she can't cook, except for scrambled eggs, which she learned how to fix when starring in 2004's A RAISIN IN THE SUN. "Seriously, I can cook them and say my lines at the same time," she said.
The kids -- Zoe and Will's two children Bridger and Sawyer -- rule the house, and that's OK with McDonald, who told the Times: "I know our children will grow up with a feeling that home is a place of comfort."
Be sure to catch the five-time Tony winner and current nominee McDonald onstage in LADY DAY, and her husband Swenson in this year's revival of LES MISERABLES.
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