Mary Steenburgen’s A Man on the Inside character is two years older than the actress, which she didn’t like.
Michael Schur, he creator of the show, had to make Mary’s character Mona 74 years old due to a plot point. In the first episode, the musician character tells Charles that she played at Woodstock at 18, which led to her character having to be 74.
At a PaleyFest 2025 event in New York City, moderator Frank Rich asked the cast, which includes Mary’s husband Ted Danson as lead character Charles, about “playing their own age.”
Mary quickly declared that she “did not play my own age.”
Schur said, “I’m so sorry,” before telling the audience, “No one’s ever been angrier at me.”
“There’s the line in the premiere [episode] where she says, ‘When I was 18, I performed at Woodstock,’ and if you do some basic math, an 18-year-old at Woodstock has to be a person of a certain age, and that age happens to be older than Mary really is,” the creator explained.
On the set, the Oscar winner told him, “I’m not 74.”
“I knew there was a reason that we did it and I couldn’t remember,” he recalled. “And then I remembered after a couple takes, and I went running back, I’m like, ‘No, no, no, there’s a reason. There’s a reason.’ “
After learning of the reason, the actress had no problem playing an older character.
“Of course, I loved the reason, so I was fine with that,” she said. “My character played Woodstock, I can accept that.”
A Man on the Inside season 2 follows Danson’s Charles Nieuwendyk, a widower and retired engineering professor-turned-private investigator, as he goes undercover to help Wheeler College president Jack Berenger (Max Greenfield) find a thief.
