Laurie Metcalf knew the question was coming “at some point” so she came prepared, but when The New Yorker’s Michael Schulman finally asked about her many collaborations with producer Scott Rudin, the Tony Award winner “fumbled her words” as she defended his comeback.

“It’s so touchy. It’s so hard,” she said in a lengthy profile published today to promote their latest partnership, the new Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, now on stage at New York’s Winter Garden Theatre. “He talked about his therapy, he apologized, he owned what he said, he reflected on it,” she said as she read from notes, per Schulman. “He was in the process of rehabilitation. So I just think that, unless we think there is no possibility of real rehabilitation, then we shouldn’t ask people to try and do it.”

The once-prolific producer was a Hollywood powerhouse who churned out films and stage productions at an impressive clip for decades. That was until a Hollywood Reporter investigation published in 2021 detailed multiple allegations of abusive behavior from former staffers who claim they witnessed him throwing objects, berating employees and, in one instance, slamming a computer monitor on an assistant’s hand. The staffer wound up in the emergency room. “Everyone just knows he’s an absolute monster,” said one employee.

Rudin retreated from his career for several years and spent time in therapy. In a New York Times interview published in March 2025, Rudin took responsibility for much of his actions and said that he had a lot more self-control. “I learned I don’t matter that much, and I think that’s very healthy,” he said. “I don’t want to let anybody down.”

The interview came as he was mounting a career comeback with Barry Diller to produce Samuel D. Hunter’s Little Bear Ridge Road starring Metcalf and Micah Stock, a production that had a limited run. “I’m going to try to come back and make some more good work, and people will feel how they feel,” Rudin said at the time. “And if some people are really angry about it, they’ll have the right to be angry about it.”

With Death of a Salesman, Metcalf was “doubling down” on her partnership with Rudin by starring in back-to-back productions for the “controversial figure,” per The New Yorker. Their history runs deeper. Rudin is credited with suggesting Metcalf for a part in Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, which landed her an Oscar nomination. She won back-to-back Tony Awards for A Doll’s House, Part 2 and Three Tall Women, both produced by Rudin.

As it turns out, Metcalf was key to Rudin’s comeback. Little Bear Ridge Road was originally commissioned by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, a Chicago company that Metcalf co-founded. She starred in Steppenwolf’s original 2024 production, and when Rudin offered to bring it to Broadway, Steppenwolf declined to work with him, per The New Yorker.

“It didn’t feel in alignment with our values and mission that he would come back on Steppenwolf’s name,” a source told Schulman. “In a precarious moment where we were rebuilding back from the pandemic, why would we partner with someone who the industry felt really harmed by? We can’t be a vehicle for someone to prove that they’ve changed.”

The situation grew complicated and left Metcalf “distraught” per The New Yorker. She “took the extraordinary step of threatening to quit Steppenwolf” unless the theater company — co-founded by Terry Kinney, Jeff Perry, Gary Sinise and John Malkovich — gave up its rights to the production which it did. Asked by Schulman to explain what happened, Metcalf broke down in tears.

“I can’t really go into that, because that’s something I haven’t even figured out for myself, my relationship back there,” she said, adding that she’s not been involved in Steppenwolf’s milestone 50th anniversary season. She’s still figuring that out, too. “I want my own celebration of that, and I want to celebrate it with some of the Old Guard. I want to go back in time, and I want to be brave with the people who taught me to be brave. I don’t want to worry if something is not P.C.— not to trigger people. Just to be daring.”

Daring, like being the first high-profile Hollywood talents to work with Rudin. “I find it hypocritical that some people want to work with him but didn’t want to be the first,” she said.