But Nora is no villain; in the hands of Tony nominee Laurie Metcalf she is, of course, a complex character trapped by the societal institutions of her time. Metcalf wears her character like a second skin—leaving audiences scratching their heads in wonder: How much of Nora is actually Metcalf?

“It’s funny that some plays come to you at a great moment in your life and Nora came to me at a perfect moment,” says Metcalf in the video above. “I’m not out there actually trying to convert the audience away from marriage personally, but I find it easy to make that argument as myself.”

Nora marks Metcalf’s fourth nomination over all, but this one feels particularly special. “I was proud of the whole show. I was proud that everybody in the cast was nominated and I was proud of all the collaborative work that we had put into the script,” she says. “That's the way that [playwright] Lucas Hnath likes to work is with the actors, and so I believe that everybody had a hand in it and can all be equally proud of how it turned out.