Melora Hardin, who plays the editor Francine Blake in McNEAL, began acting professionally at the age of six. On television, she has played Jan Levinson on “The Office” and Trudy Monk on “Monk.” Onstage, she has starred in Chicago and Appropriate. She has been a semi-finalist on “Dancing with the Stars” and is a singer-songwriter with three CDs to her name. She has directed an upcoming documentary feature called “Hunter, Thunder.” And she is a fine artist who has a wallpaper line called Storyboards by Melora Hardin available on www.melora.com. “I have a lot of creative energy,” she told me in a recent dressing-room interview.
I asked Hardin how her rich and varied background relates to Francine, her McNEAL character. Francine years ago had a relationship with the title character, portrayed by Robert Downey Jr, and finally has a chance to confront him about his many damaging untruths. “I often get cast as women who are straightforward and strong and powerful and Francine is definitely those things,” Hardin replied. “I play complicated women. I love them and they love me. And I’ve played an editor before, on ‘The Bold Type’” -- a streaming show about a global women’s magazine. “Otherwise, Francine is a pretty singular character in my career.”
Of Francine’s scene with McNeal, Hardin said, “She can still remember the depth of intimacy that they shared. They were deeply in love – they were the ones for each other.” Francine’s role in the drama is unique: “He can’t flatten her,” Hardin said, “and until then he flattens pretty much everybody – his son, his agent, a young New York Times reporter.” Hardin added that women who have come to see the play have told her that they feel vindicated by Francine. Why? “Because she tells him: I’m not playing along with your lies.”
That’s a sentiment Hardin found so motivational that she wrote it on a Post-it stuck to the mirror in her dressing room – a lovely haven bearing the marks of her artist’s eye.
Other Post-its carry words mentioned by cast members when they do their nightly warm-up together before curtain. Most actors warm up but not always collectively. “Because it’s such a small cast,” Hardin said, “and we don’t see much of each other during performance, we made a commitment at the beginning to get ready as an ensemble.” During this gathering, the group chooses a word for the night. “It can be anything someone says. It helps ground us.” When the word is especially useful it becomes one of Hardin’s mirror signposts.
Our conversation returned to Francine’s confrontation with McNeal. “She’s lived for a long time with the trauma of how he used her,” Hardin said. “She’s had to have healed, because she’s able to throw him a line about forgiveness. If she weren’t okay, she wouldn’t be able to do that.”
Hardin and I spoke about “Hunter’s Thunder,” that documentary she has been working on for seven years and that will premiere sometime in 2025. It has to do with an adult real life follow-up to “Thunder,” a TV show Hardin did when she was ten in which she and a black stallion performed heroic deeds. Decades later, Hardin was directing a music video and needed a horse, and Hunter Austin, the woman who provided the equine assistance, turned out to have been a childhood fan of “Thunder.” It was a serendipitous meeting that has had profound effects on Hardin’s artwork and on the lives of both her and Austin.
“It’s the story of female friendship and what it really takes to transform yourself from pain,” Hardin said. “In doing the documentary I’ve learned profoundly from Hunter about the process of healing. My character in McNEAL is very different but I’d like to think that something of what I’ve absorbed from “Hunter’s Thunder” informs my performance in the play."
Brendan Lemon is a freelance journalist in New York.
