Interview: Rebecca De Mornay on Power, Passion & Moral Ambiguity in THE PUSHOVER

Three floors above the constant motion of West 36th Street, just steps from the iconic Ripley-Grier Studios, something electric is taking shape inside the Chain Theatre. Upon my arrival, the energy in the lobby was buzzing as members of the crew were preparing for the afternoon’s tech rehearsal. This team moves with purpose, but not without warmth. Each offers a quick smile as they pass. The joy of building something new, something not yet fully formed, is palpable.

I’m greeted, offered water, and led into an intimate rehearsal space. There, Rebecca De Mornay sits with her script binder open across her lap, reviewing notes. As I enter, she stands immediately, warm and present, and after a brief exchange of pleasantries, we dive into a conversation about THE PUSHOVER, the world premiere of a new play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright John Patrick Shanley.

For De Mornay, the journey to this production feels almost fated. “John Patrick Shanley is probably my favorite American living playwright and has been for many, many years,” she tells me. “And I’d never met him.”

That changed recently during a benefit for the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, where De Mornay performed one of Shanley’s one-acts. The experience was transformative. “It was magical. It brought me back onto the stage, which I hadn't been in a long time,” she recalls. “And it got me saying the words of John Patrick Shanley.”

So when Shanley reached out with a new script, there was no hesitation. He had texted her while she was driving. “I pulled over to the side of the road, literally, and started reading it,” she remembers. “After I read it, I just texted him, ‘Wow,’ because the play is so explosive. It's really a wild, wild, unpredictable ride.”

Unpredictability is the heart of THE PUSHOVER, which follows three dangerous women whose lives collide across vastly different settings. De Mornay plays Evelyn, a character she describes with both admiration and fascination. “She’s a very dangerous, amoral character, but in the context of that, she actually is bringing about good to somebody,” De Mornay explains.

It’s a paradox that defines not only Evelyn, but much of Shanley’s work. “She's not naive or an idealist. She's not a cynic and down on the world,” says De Mornay. “She sees the world for what it is and can live in it, knows what human nature is, works it to her advantage, and feels everybody does if they can. End of story.”

That unapologetic pragmatism is paired with something equally compelling: power. “She’s very powerful as a human, and I love that for a woman,” De Mornay states. “She’s unafraid of her own power, which is something I just love to show an audience.”

Yet beneath that power lies contradiction, a theme De Mornay returns to again and again. “Her Achilles heel is that she did fall in love,” De Mornay reveals about Evelyn. “She, of all people, actually becomes somewhat powerless in the face of the person she loves.”

That push and pull between control and vulnerability is what gives Evelyn her depth, and what makes THE PUSHOVER more than just a story about dangerous women. “It [the play] will invite the audience to understand their own moral ambiguity, their own moral contradictions, because to be human is to have those moral contradictions,” she says.

It’s a perspective that aligns seamlessly with Shanley’s writing. “There’s a soul and lyricism. There’s depth and the humanity that he brings into ordinary people in ordinary circumstances,” she observes. “You're watching very complex scenarios that all of us go through on some level.”

Despite the demands of the role, particularly its sheer volume of dialogue, De Mornay describes the rehearsal room as surprisingly fluid. “It’s been kind of effortless. Working with Christina Toth has been such a pleasure. And Di Zhu brings exactly what her character needs,” De Mornay says. “The casting is very good. And when the casting's good, it really becomes just finding your own character and finding how they interact.”

That ease, however, doesn’t diminish the rigor required to bring Shanley’s language to life. “It’s finding the truth of people that are living much more on the edges of what the normal, acceptable society is,” she explains.

“I personally don't swear very much. They [the characters] swear all the time,” she adds. “Shanley finds incredible comedy in the language of insults.”

Guiding the production is director Kirk Gostkowski, whose process has offered De Mornay new insights into her own work. “He presented blocking in a different way than I’ve ever seen,” she mentions of Gostkowski’s style of starting with blocking. “If you have a place to go, it connects with the lines and helps with the memorization,” she says of his technique.

Equally impactful is Shanley’s presence in the room, not just as a writer, but as a collaborator. “He is so kind and perceptive while he’s watching you,” she explains.

For De Mornay, this return to the stage marks a shift, not just in medium, but in artistic fulfillment. “Doing theater, I’ve always felt I get so much back, especially from the audience,” she reflects. In contrast, she describes film work as something that takes from her. “They capture it, and they take it,” she says. “It kind of drains me more, so I don't go home energized.” Yet, she finds the opposite is true of performing on a stage in front of a live audience.

Naturally, that exchange between actor and audience is something she has yet to experience with THE PUSHOVER, but she anticipates keenly. “I think that they’re going to be intrigued, shocked, entertained, laugh, and be disturbed,” she says of how audiences will react to the play. “Hopefully, then they’ll start to feel the humanity of what they’ve been watching.”

Back in that rehearsal room, as De Mornay prepares to return to her script, it’s clear that THE PUSHOVER is not interested in easy answers. It is a play about contradiction, power and vulnerability, survival and love, and morality and its many gray areas. And in De Mornay’s hands, Evelyn will become not just dangerous, but deeply, recognizably human.