Video: Melora Hardin Talks MCNEAL Role, Working with Robert Downey Jr.

Actress Melora Hardin is going up against Robert Downey, Jr.'s McNeal. In the play of the same name, The Office star plays Francine Blake, the retired editor-in-chief of The New York Times and McNeal's former lover.

"She's really the one person that can really go toe-to-toe with him and kind of tell it like it is," Hardin explained on a recent visit to Good Morning America. The play addresses the rising use of Artificial intelligence and Hardin's character serves as a counterpoint to McNeal. "She's going to confront the lies [of A.I.] and give it to him but she also has a lot of heart so she also throws him a line."

Also in the interview, the performer contrasted the differences between performing on stage as opposed to onscreen: "They are both so different and so much fun," adding that this production in particular is a "bucket list item." Watch the interview!

McNEAL, the new play by Ayad Akhtar and directed by Bartlett Sher, is currently playing a limited engagement through Sunday, November 24 only at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. 
The cast features Academy Award-winner Robert Downey Jr., Brittany Bellizeare, Rafi Gavron, Melora Hardin, Andrea Martin, Ruthie Ann Miles, and Saisha Talwar.

Good writers borrow, great writers steal. Jacob McNeal (Robert Downey Jr.) is a great writer, one of our greatest, a perpetual candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. But McNeal also has an estranged son, a new novel, old axes to grind and an unhealthy fascination with Artificial Intelligence. Pulitzer Prize-winner Ayad Akhtar’s new play is a startling and wickedly smart examination of the inescapable humanity – and increasing inhumanity – of the stories we tell.