ABCMarcia Gay Harden is coming to shake things up on How to Get Away With Murder, but don't call her the villain. The Oscar winner plays Hannah Keating, sister to Annalise Keating's (Viola Davis) dead husband Sam Keating (Tom Verica). Only Hannah doesn't know he's dead…yet. When she comes to town, well, it's going to be hard to keep a secret.
"I don't know if you know yet, she's a psychiatrist, so she kind of has a way of seeing through people, their behaviors and idiosyncrasies, and she's a truth-seeker. She's not someone who's comfortable with secrets," Harden tells E! Online. "She's come down there to put the pieces together—‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark'—and she came down to sniff it out."
It's a whole new world for Harden. She got her first taste of what life would be like in Shondalands' How to Get Away With Murder last week when her one line lit up Twitter.
"I had one line the other night and I was trending worldwide on Twitter. Bailee Madison texted me and goes, ‘Oh my god, you're trending on Twitter.' I was like, ‘What? What does that even mean?' [Laughs.] She said it's from How to Get Away With Murder," she says. "That's crazy, it was one line! But, you know, it's a new world we live in.
Look for Hannah and Annalise to throwdown. Yes, Marcia Gay Harden vs. Viola Davis. We're in!
What drew you to the role?
It's really the show, How to Get Away With Murder, and Viola Davis, that's the draw of the project. She is just incredible and the writing is incredible. At the end of an episode a line is, "Why is your penis on a dead girl's phone?" It has got to be best line ever. And just that kind of formidable person that she Viola is creating in Annalise and knowing that my character was supposed to go up against her, toe-to-toe with her, was an exciting thing to actually do. To play with that.
The promo for the next episode promised a throwdown between the two of you and I need to know everything about it. What was it like to film? What can you tease about your dynamic with Viola Davis?
I can say, that what was given to us for why we might have been enemies for years, was a little vague. The writers themselves were like, ‘Well, we're not sure. What do you think?' So, gathered some things between us. One of the lines in the scene had to do with secrets and so we put together a scene and we improved a lot of it. I think that's what you're seeing tonight. A scene where Hannah's putting together the pieces of the puzzle and then the episode ends with a sort of shocking discovery that changes everything.
Would you say Hannah is a villain?
No! No, I don't. Even though she's not always the nicest person, but no, I don't see her as a villain. I see her…like you and me. We're normal people. I don't teach a class about murder called How to Get Away With Murder, [Laughs.] and I don't read the obituaries every day, or the police reports…we don't deal with all these heinous crimes with forensic toxicology and all that, it's all real. We read about it in the newspapers, so that world is so far outside the world of possible behavior of people that we know…[Annalise's] life and all the students' lives, they're immersed in it, so I'm like the innocent bystander putting all these things together, saying ‘This doesn't make sense. Something smells wrong here.' But you wouldn't necessarily go, ‘You're a murderer!' You wouldn't make those connections, because…how could you suspect such a horrible thing of somebody that you knew…when they pulled the neighbor guy out with the girls and the basement they went, ‘Oh, he's so nice. He's just the nicest guy.' People are familiar and because of that familiarity you don't expect any darkness about them.
Your Trophy Wife character was obsessed with Scandal. Is that true in real life?
Yeah, I am obsessed with Scandal. [Laughs.] No, I'm not, although I do love Kerry Washington and I'm so curious—I tuned in last week and was like, ‘What happened that she's in that horrible dungeon with these horrible people?' But, yeah, I have three kids and I have to say it's really hard to get on a great television regimen with three kids at different ages doing homework. That is my big, bad excuse for not being more of a TV-phile, if you will.
Are you looking for another TV series? We all know Trophy Wife was canceled too soon.
Yeah, I agree with you, Chris, it was. Yeah, I am. And I would love to do comedy again. It was so much fun to do. I'm reading some really great pilots right now and it is the season. When you are participating in something like How to Get Away With Murder, or even Trophy Wife, I get spoiled. The standards go way up, ‘That's what I want to do! That kind of thing! That kind of writing,' and that's rare. That kind of writing is pretty rare and it's really exciting. It's happening more and more now, with cable and all the different, wonderful competition, but I still think it's one of the better shows on right now and the writing is really exciting…I think the fanbase shows that too. They're all over it.
How to Get Away With Murder airs Thursdays, 10 p.m. on ABC.