This post was originally published Dec. 24, 2021.
Joel Coen had just put to bed “Hail, Caesar!” – his 17th feature film with brother Ethan Coen – when the idea for “The Tragedy of Macbeth” came to him.
It was 2016, and Coen was watching the Oscar-winning actress and his longtime wife, Frances McDormand, play Lady Macbeth in a Berkeley, California, theater production.
It wasn’t McDormand’s first crack at the role.
“I’m not saying I was good,” McDormand joked in a recent Q&A event after a “Tragedy of Macbeth” screening about her first Lady Macbeth performance — as a 14-year-old.