Ah, Jeff Daniels. The actor's been a breath of fresh air since at least 1981, when he first strolled onscreen in Ragtime—and then defiantly burst off it in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo—and he's maintained a distinctive anti-Hollywood authenticity to this day. Despite appearing in over 60 films and TV shows over the years, Daniels makes his home in Michigan, where he grew up helping out in his father's lumber yard. There he runs a theater company—named The Purple Rose—in his hometown of Chelsea, producing his own plays and other works.

But Daniels also keeps an apartment in NYC, where he's currently onstage in the Tony award-winning comedy God of Carnage, about two married couples locking horns after a fight between their sons in Cobble Hill Park. The show's cast has turned over thrice since the play premiered in 2009, and now Daniels has returned to play Michael, the role created by James Gandolfini. (Daniels previously brought a deliciously pompous arrogance to the role of corporate lawyer Alan, now portrayed by Dylan Baker.) We recently spoke with Daniels about the challenges and rewards of following in Gandolfini's footsteps.

How did it come to pass that you came back to Broadway to do this play again? I think the producers, and casting director Daniel Swee in particular, were inquiring who might be interested in doing the tour and that's what started it. They approached me about that, knowing that Jim [Gandolfini] was not going to do it, and then the holidays came and went, and they said look, we're going to put in a third cast and asked if I'd be interested in doing that. That actually piqued my interest because of the sort of Broadway history of it all. You can count on one hand the guys that flipped roles in the same production on Broadway and so that interested me.

But I'm friends with Jim, and the four of us went through a once in a lifetime kind of experience with "Carnage" about a year ago. So I met with him and just said, "Look, you know, do you got a problem with this at all?" Because I don't know how I'd feel if someone would do this to me, flipping with me and all. And he goes, "No, no, no." He couldn't have been more supportive. So I said, "Okay, I think I'll give it a shot." Its also the kind of a creative challenge that after this many decades that I look for, that keeps me interested, to attack something like this.

Have you ever flipped a role like this before?The Purple Rose of Cairo. [laughs] That's the only one.

When you were preparing this role, did you find yourself struggling to shake loose from what Gandolfini had done? Yeah, first of all when I talked to him I told him this: While we were doing it... He used himself so brilliantly I think, that if he could use himself and slap the name Michael on it, he did it. There's a kind of rawness and purity and honesty to that kind of performance, and I told him that if I could use myself the way he used himself, if I can do that, then I'd be well on the way to pulling it off. But as far as the rhythms to the play, there are certain lines that yeah, well, they are pretty much what Jim did. But one of the things that makes it different is that we have have different Veronicas, and Marcia [Gay Harden] was terrific, and Janet McTeer has her way, and it's just a joy to play with her every night, but what she does spins my Michael elsewhere. So I think there's a sameness to it all but the differences tend to be in the interaction according to who Veronica is. So that has spun it a little differently.

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Joan Marcus

Is it possible for you to articulate how the play is different now, or is it something ineffable? Having been in both rehearsal rooms, Matthew [Warchus, Director] does this really well, he is a great student of people in that he finds what the actor organically might be, or what they can bring into the role, and he helps the actor find that and put that into the role. With Jim and Marcia, they had a volatility to them that Matthew really explored. When Janet came in, the first thing she wanted to do with the role [of Veronica] was to make this fight we have in the play to be the mother of all fights, but also be one of the few fights we have in our marriage. So there was a kind of "putting the lid on things" for years and years that we were trying to do with the present incarnation, and you approach it differently. You want it to be the fight that ends the marriage, but also that these two people in their twenty years of marriage never ever ever had a fight like this. They disagree a lot, but at least that's the approach we took to it. How that spins out and how that makes the play different, I don't know. It's hard for me to say. I'm in the middle of it.

Has Gandolfini come to see this production? No, not yet. Marcia came. Jim's coming, Hope's [Hope Davis, who played Annette] coming. But we're here until July. He said he's coming. There are certain parts to the play that are tricky in playing Michael, and he said, "I want to come and see you try to do such and such", and I'm going, "Yeah, I wanna see me try and do it too." [Laughs]

What exactly was he referring to? It's not important, certain transitions are kind of like leaping tall buildings.

Did Marcia have anything to say about it? She could not have been nicer. It's interesting, you know, how it can... Look, there's a room of really good actors, and anyone who takes on this play is going to make it their own. For me to sit on stage and watch Dylan Baker do similar things but in a lot of ways quite different things with Allen—its wonderful to see how other creative people take what you had and make it their own. There is no best. The legend that was us a year ago—that's whatever. You get four good actors on a certain project, and they're consistently good at everything they do, which i think the four of us were a year ago and the four of us are now, it ends up being equal. Not better, but a different way of doing it that gets to the same place. You go to an awards show or two, the actors walk around the room, and everybody's good. You know? It's a room where everybody's good. It's nice to be invited and have a seat at a table inside that room, and that's kind of how that feels here. There's such a respect, you really feel it on Broadway. You walk around and see other people's work, and you go to a local bar and you're sitting with Alfred Molina or Chris Walken, and its just good actors getting to do good work, and you're part of that, and that is what it feels like.

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Joan Marcus

As you've been working on this with Dylan Baker, did you realize anything about the character you created, Alan, that you didn't see the first time around? There are laughs he's getting, jokes he's getting, where I just went "Oh, I see, it was that easy." There were lines in rehearsal that of course I never got a laugh on, and of course the entire crew cracks up as if, "Oh finally, that's how that line should be done," and you're the only one in the room not laughing and you're going "Oh, that was disturbing." He's trying to find his own way through it. Its a different approach than mine, but it gets to the same place. From day one, I told him, "He's yours, make it your own, I'll answer any questions, but I'm busy doing Michael." I didn't pay much attention to him to be honest.

So have you enjoyed being back in NY? We have an apartment here, it really is a second home. And "Carnage" is a great gig. You're on Broadway, it's a comedy, and when you do it right, and thankfully we are, it's a rock and roll show. It's a bit of an event, and we take it to the audience and we just ring the laughs out of them. What a great job. Having been around a long time, I don't take for granted, the opportunity to play on Broadway, and the whole history of it. I just love it. I started out in the theater, I had my own theater company, and I just feel like a theater rat that's done 55 movies. I love being back, I love getting to do it every night. I don't mind the eight times a week. I love the day off, but its a joy to do every night.

What do you like to do on your day off? Sleep. [Laughs] Really. And I play guitar a lot; that doesn't take too much physical excursion, but that's what I do. I work on acoustic guitar, and I got a gig on April 19th at City Winery. So I've been playing and getting the show ready. I played there three times last year; it's a great place. I love just walking up and plugging in and it's just me and the guitar for the whole 90 minutes. I've been doing it about ten years now around the country. The actor, the playwright, the director, the singer, the songwriter, they're all out there with me. I get to use all of me when I do that.

What do you have coming up next? I know you're in Howl. Yeah, I got a part in that. Paper Man is a part I really liked that's going to be released in two or three cities on April 16th or something like that.

What's that about? It's about a writer that can't write. He goes out to Montauk and befriends a 16 year old girl, and what should be a pedophile situation, or an underage situation, isn't. They're just two lost souls who found each other but who are decades apart. It's really well written. Kieren and Michelle Mulroney wrote and directed it. Emma Stone's in it, Ryan Reynold's in it. Its a great script. But it's in the world of distribution. It's a really good movie, but when the economy went south half the distributing companies went with it. It's harder and harder to get your movie out there, so the fact that somebody picked it up is terrific. It's a really good script, a really good story.

Is that in part why you love having your theater company, so you don't have to deal with any of that? Well as a playwright, yes. I've made a couple of independent movies that I wrote, directed and starred in, and I enjoyed that. But it's so all-consuming. To write a screenplay takes three months to a year, to shoot it is three months, and then the post production and distribution, so it basically takes up two years of your life by the end of it. And then you open it on a weekend and if not enough people see it, it's just missed. And there goes two years of your life. That's why I'm not interested in having my own production company and writing screenplays for myself. I just didn't want to deal with it. If you want me, call me. And that's kind of how I approached the film career. But with the playwriting, I know that after a few plays I got good, and I understood playwriting, so I wasn't just out there screwing around. I know that if I write a play, and it measures up to what I've done before, then there will be an audience that sees it. I can't guarantee that if I write a screenplay. So that's where I put my energies.