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Broadway shows usually come with a back story about the yearslong slog it took to get them there. Not so with Heidi Schreck\u2019s new translation of Chekhov\u2019s \u201cUncle Vanya,\u201d<\/a> which arrived at Lincoln Center Theater\u2019s Vivian Beaumont Theater not even 12 months after its inception.<\/p>\n Directed by Lila Neugebauer, it is Schreck\u2019s first Broadway show since \u201cWhat the Constitution Means to Me<\/a>,\u201d in 2019, and the ensemble is a starry one. Steve Carell is making his Broadway debut as Vanya, who believes he has wasted his life running a provincial estate and its farm alongside his niece, Sonia, played by Alison Pill, to support Sonia\u2019s largely absentee father, portrayed by Alfred Molina<\/a>.<\/p>\n William Jackson Harper, best known for \u201cThe Good Place<\/a>,\u201d plays Astrov, the eco-nerd doctor whom Sonia loves. Anika Noni Rose, a Tony Award winner for \u201cCaroline, or Change,\u201d is the glamorous Elena, Sonia\u2019s stepmother, for whom both Vanya and Astrov yearn.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In mid-April, a week before the show\u2019s opening on April 24, Schreck, Neugebauer, Carell, Harper, Pill and Rose gathered to talk over their dinner break in a room off the Beaumont lobby. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n What was your relationship to \u201cUncle Vanya\u201d and Chekhov before this show?<\/strong><\/p>\n HEIDI SCHRECK <\/strong>I lived in Russia right out of college for two years. When I moved back to Seattle, I started this theater company with my husband, and there was this Russian company who would come and perform Russian plays. They invited me to be the translator. Basically I would do live interpretation.<\/p>\n ALISON PILL <\/strong>How do you mean live? You would stand in front \u2014<\/p>\n SCHRECK <\/strong>Like I was the subtitles.<\/p>\n LILA NEUGEBAUER <\/strong>You\u2019d talk simultaneously?<\/p>\n SCHRECK <\/strong>Yes.<\/p>\n WILLIAM JACKSON HARPER <\/strong>Whoa.<\/p>\n SCHRECK <\/strong>It felt like the goal was to not get in the way of the actor. So when Lila asked me about doing this, that was the lens I brought: How can I do this and not get in the way of the text?<\/p>\n NEUGEBAUER<\/strong> I\u2019d last encountered the play maybe a decade ago and frankly remember not being particularly affected. The impetus to do this was that I reread it and was struck by a feeling of personalization so deep and surprising that I felt like, maybe I\u2019ll take a crack, but I only want to take a crack if my friend will do it with me. I wanted to do a version of the play that felt like a Heidi Schreck play.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n PILL <\/strong>I\u2019d only done workshops, spending, you know, a few days on \u201cThe Seagull\u201d or \u201cThe Cherry Orchard.\u201d I was constantly struck by how difficult it is to make sense of.<\/p>\n What makes Chekhov so hard?<\/strong><\/p>\n ANIKA NONI ROSE <\/strong>He says both a lot and nothing. When you\u2019re creating your character, you\u2019re constantly searching for the kernel of truth or life. You get to a point where you\u2019re like, \u201cYeah, I get it.\u201d And two days later you\u2019re like, \u201cWhat?\u201d It\u2019s a barrage of information, and yet you are bereft.<\/p>\n STEVE CARELL <\/strong>The more you discover, the more you realize you need to discover. It opens up in front of you, and it just keeps opening up. Every avenue you turn down. I think that\u2019s the beauty of it. We were talking about one company in Russia that rehearsed for a full year before they performed it.<\/p>\n PILL <\/strong>Which makes perfect sense. He\u2019s really specific about when people are laughing or crying, but that\u2019s about [expletive] it.<\/p>\n Had any of you ever wanted to play these roles?<\/strong><\/p>\n CARELL <\/strong>Nope.<\/p>\n HARPER <\/strong>I always found Chekhov really confounding. I\u2019m more of a new-play guy, if anything. So I never really yearned to do Chekhov necessarily until [Lila and Heidi] were like, \u201cHey, you want to hang out and read this play?\u201d And then something happened. Now I\u2019m hyped. But at the time, I was just curious about what this could be with people that I find irreverent in the best way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Steve, you haven\u2019t done a play <\/strong>since 1995<\/a><\/strong>?<\/strong><\/p>\n CARELL <\/strong>It\u2019s been a while, yeah.<\/p>\n Why this one? Why now?<\/strong><\/p>\n CARELL <\/strong>My kids are out of the house, so that\u2019s part of it. That\u2019s most of it. I didn\u2019t want to leave for months on end while they were little. But I always harbored the desire to do a play at some point. This came out of the blue. I just decided it was time, and it would be fun and challenging. The most exciting part of any project that I\u2019m a part of is that I want to be a part of an ensemble. This is that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n You and Alison played father and daughter in the 2007 movie \u201c<\/strong>Dan in Real Life<\/a><\/strong>.\u201d Does that history help with Vanya and Sonia?<\/strong><\/p>\n PILL <\/strong>I think so.<\/p>\n CARELL<\/strong> I think so, too.<\/p>\n PILL <\/strong>Vanya\u2019s her dad, for all intents and purposes. There is a man whose DNA she has, but he\u2019s not particularly great. In terms of day-to-day stuff, the way we\u2019ve built it is just: This is her dad. [Steve has] known me since I was turning 21. That can only help inform the kind of closeness that Sonia and Vanya need to have.<\/p>\n Heidi, why was this the next thing in your career?<\/strong><\/p>\n SCHRECK<\/strong> I, like many of us, had a pretty wild last five years. I gave birth; we had a pandemic. I said yes because of Lila and because of Chekhov. But when I went to actually do the work, I found it deeply calming after some fairly intense postpartum depression. I found spending time with this play and with these words and with this writer and with Lila in this moment to be a very healing thing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Was there anything that you wanted to amplify, or rectify?<\/strong><\/p>\n SCHRECK <\/strong>I felt no need to revise the play. I\u2019m just really fascinated by the fact that the work Vanya has done his whole life is a very feminine, maternal kind of work. He\u2019s raised a daughter. He\u2019s made another man\u2019s career possible. He\u2019s done the labor that, historically, women do. My dad was very much a Mr. Mom kind of character. The work he did in my life was so meaningful. I get really sad that Vanya feels like he didn\u2019t do anything because I feel like he really did.<\/p>\n NEUGEBAUER<\/strong> There\u2019s a moment in the play where Steve says, Vanya says, \u201cHere\u2019s my life. Here\u2019s my love. What do I do with it? Where do I put it?\u201d I found myself thinking, well, here\u2019s where you put it, with your daughter. And that\u2019s what the end of the play is: He puts it here.<\/p>\n