By Andrew Gans
03 Sep 2010

	Meghann Fahy and Mazzie in Next to Normal
	photo by Joan Marcus

And, does the actress find riding the emotional roller coaster that is Diana Goodman draining or cathartic? "It's a little of both," Mazzie answers. "It's very draining, but also, I feel hope at the end. I feel hope at least for a relationship with Natalie and that Natalie's going to be able to somehow go forward in a better way, and so I feel that there is hope there for her. And Diana will always struggle, that will always be, but I think she has had clarity and some sort of understanding of what she's been doing. And I also feel that from the audience, the catharsis because we share it together. I mean, every night, you hear people sobbing in the audience along with me. So we're all sharing this experience together. And then meeting people at the stage door — there is definitely a catharsis that goes with that."

Another benefit of working with her husband is that once the performance is over and the two head home, "I don't have to explain anything that happens, nor does he. We were there. We experienced it together. We met the same people, we heard the stories. We do talk about people that we met and stories — we will talk about that, and if there's something that happened or that we need to talk about. But for the most part, we try to come home and not bring it home. Because the day is all about [the show] — I wake up in the morning and I'm thinking about Diana. My day is about [that]. And Jason's is, too. I mean, since you're talking to me, I'm talking about myself, but [my day typically] is about preparing for the day and preparing for the evening or the five-show weekend that we have coming up. You know, I carry her around with me. I think about her all the time in life and dealing with what she must deal with. Even waking up, not being able to get out of bed. I can get out of bed, but [sometimes] you wake up and you think, 'There are a lot of people [for whom] getting out of bed and going to take a shower may take them all day.' And when you start to really think about that, it's just devastating. But that's just one teeny-weeny example of what this can do to people."

And, how does Mazzie feel her performance has changed since she stepped into the critically praised musical? "I just think we've fine tuned it, Michael and I, in just little elements. I'm a very strong person, and I feel like my Diana has a lot of strength to her, but she starts at a very compromised point, 16 years into it, so she's been beaten down a lot. So I think just fine-tuning that element of what I can bring to something — I'm talking little line readings and attitudes, that sort of thing. And now we're at a really good place, and Michael's just said, 'Mess it up,'" Mazzie says with a laugh. "So I feel like we're pretty where we're supposed to be, and now it's just playing and discovering every night, which is just great. The piece really allows for that because these characters are so rich. I mean, Diana's life is endless to me, what I can cull from it and the experiences she's had. It's just sort of one of those characters that you can just keep building in your ground, in your head, and that's so great."

Well, that's all for now. Happy diva-watching! E-mail questions or comments to agans@playbill.com.