Marcia Gay Harden said that, years after starring in a New York production of "The Seagull" for Mike Nichols, the "Graduate" director apologized for being so hard on her because Philip Seymour Hoffman told him to.

Speaking with "Modern Family" star Jesse Tyler Ferguson in this week's episode of his "Dinner's On Me" podcast, Harden said that Nichols blamed her for everything that went wrong with the 2001 New York production.

Harden had just won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for "Pollock," which meant she didn't have to audition to join the cast, which included Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Natalie Portman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Stephen Spinella, Larry Pine, Deborah Monk and John Goodman.

The cast was "bonkers," so Harden said she didn't hesitate to say yes. "I had in my mind, my vain little mind, that Mike would see me and realize I was the new Meryl Streep. I just had in mind that he would love me and that he would find someone similar in spirit [and feel the same] passion that he had for Meryl."

Unfortunately, Nichols decided that she was the show's "guinea pig." She explained to Ferguson, "It means that there's one person who gets picked on, and when the show isn't going to be successful, it's going to be that person's fault. And there's nothing, no, no way that person can ever be successful."

While Nichols treated Streep as "the reigning queen of that particular play," Harden said that "it very quickly became clear that no matter what I did as Masha, it was the wrong thing to do."

The actress remembered crying in the dressing room that she shared with Streep. "At one point I sobbed, 'I don't think Mike likes me.'"

Streep suggested that maybe Nichols disliked the character. "I don't think he likes Masha. And it's your job to stay loyal to your character," she recalled Streep telling her.

Eight years later, Nichols came to see Harden in "God of Carnage" on Broadway and apologized for the way he'd treated her during "The Seagull."

"He bursts into tears and I hug him and he says, 'I was really hard on you during, 'The Seagull, wasn't I?' And I said, 'Yes.' And he said, 'Even Philip Seymour told me I was really hard on you!'"

She told him, "Well, you were."

That's when Nichols gushed, "You're one of the greatest actresses in America."

"That's why the end of the story is a little embarrassing to say, but he said it. And I think that the takeaway for me is that it was a two-way street," she told Ferguson. "Mike was disappointed in what I didn't know. And he was also playing favorites, as he does. He can be very hard on people, but he was disappointed that I didn't instinctively come at it with what he knew. And so he punished me a little bit for it."