The script is “rife for comedy,” Harden says. While some wives have an inkling that their husband is fooling around - clues such as the proverbial matchbook with a scribbled phone number or lipstick on the handkerchief - in “If I Were You,” Harden’s Madelyn is completely caught off guard when she stops for takeout and sees her husband, Paul (Joseph Kell), holding hands with a beautiful younger woman, Lucy (Leonor Watling). Are we being punished for having children?” The happens around the child bearing and child raising years.
By and large, the statistics support the fact that there’s more cheating on the male end. There was a distancing and an infidelity. Infidelity is a common, accepted behavior. “Art imitates life in some ways,” says Harden, explaining that she accepted the role in “If I Were You” 18 months before filing for divorce early last year from Thaddaeus Scheel, her husband of 15 years. In her latest film, “If I Were You,” opening today, Oscar winner Harden plays Madelyn Reid, an under-appreciated wife who befriends her philandering husband’s mistress. Hillary was right: It does takes a village.” “You juggle the balls and some of them drop. “I love that in this day and age we can straddle home and job,” Harden says. The actress, who moved to California from New York with her three children after a recent divorce, is finding the balance between work and home, but not without the occasional help of a girlfriend.
