Interview: From Mad Men to Creditors, Maggie Siff Takes On Roles That Challenge the Status Quo 

Known for her roles in Mad Men, Sons of Anarchy, and Billions, Maggie Siff has had her share of going head-to-head with toxic alpha males onscreen. That comes in handy as she takes on the role of Tekla in August Strindberg’s controversial 1889 drama Creditors, now running at the Minetta Lane Theatre.

Siff plays opposite Liev Shreiber and Justice Smith in the taut battle of the sexes, which Jen Silverman has adapted for the new Audible production. TheaterMania recently talked with Siff about this new stage project as well as what led her to a career in the theater and what roles she’d like to play in the future.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

You often play female characters who have a seat at the table with the men. Even if they’re flawed, they’re flawed in the same ways that men are. Even if they cheat or are corrupt, there’s power in that.
I started working on camera in this kind of peak golden age of cable television. My first real job was on Mad Men, which kind of ushered in this whole storytelling genre format and investment in long-form stories where there are a lot of male antiheroes. I have had conversations in the shows that I’ve been involved with along the way, during my television career, in particular with the last one in Billions, where I’m like, why don’t women get to be antiheroes?

My thinking about it has changed over the years, but in general, because I sort of came of age in that moment as a person performing in that medium, I really felt my elbows being like, come on, I want to have the chance to have that size and scope and complexity and moral ambiguity and all the things that were so juicy about the storytelling at that time. I have a little antihero allergy now. I just want people real and complicated. All the actresses in the world that I know just long for more story and more roles and more complexity, more different kinds of roles, roles that carry on past 40 and 50 and 60. We all just want want a seat at the table in terms of variety, scope, and depth of representation.

I really was surprised at the humor in Creditors because I thought it was going to be so intense and serious, and it is intense, but there was a levity to it that I didn’t expect.
There’s a word that I think Liev brought into the room that was sort of like the worry that what Strindberg brings with him is this feeling of “turgid” drama, something that was going to feel heavy and grinding and serious, but Jen Silverman, in collaboration with our director Ian Rickson, brought that text into the present moment. Strindberg does have a very electric fascination with relations between the sexes. He’s often accused of misogyny, but he also really loved and was fascinated by women and by powerful women.

The character of Tekla in the original is a fascinating character. Jen really scrubbed it of its misogyny, but kept the bones of what’s visceral and fascinating about relations between the sexes, and then sort of brought it into this moment so it could live and breathe and interact and interface with the consciousness that a contemporary audience is carrying with them about relations between the sexes.

Did you grow up going to a lot of theater in New York?
Yeah, I did. I grew up in the Bronx. My father was actually an actor for the first 10 years of my life, so we went to the theater. The very first thing I saw, I think, was Barnum on Broadway, and I saw the original Annie, and Dad took me to see Cats in the 5th grade. I saw a fair amount of theater as a kid and then I saw things that my dad was doing regionally and there were a lot of core memories that hit me.

Do you think that’s what inspired you to pursue a career in acting?
I think so. People would ask me what I wanted to be, and I would say I’m going to be a star of singing, dancing, acting, and art because this felt like joy to me, this is where the shine was, and I think a lot of kids feel that way. The place where there’s play and joy and delight, why would you want to do anything else? That feeling just was always with me. I think I always knew I was an actor.

What would you tell your younger self?
Sometimes when I talk to students who are in their 20s taking an acting class, I become so overwhelmed with emotion because I just so remember being that age and being, like, am I good enough? Do I want this enough? How do I prove myself? How do I get anywhere? I guess if I had anything to say, it would just be, relax. You don’t have to be great. You don’t have to be anything. You just need to be open and be willing to learn and to try and to fail. Sometimes you might succeed, sometimes you might fall down, but it really doesn’t matter.

Do you have any dream roles?
I’ve never really done Chekhov professionally, and I would love to. There’s Queen Margaret in Richard III and all those Henrys in the Shakespeare canon. I would love to do Titania in Midsummer. As you reach a certain age, you’re like, OK, I’m ready for anything.