‘Monster’ star Laurie Metcalf in Charlie Hunnam’s nude scene as Ed Gein

Laurie Metcalf’s four-decade acting career spans comedy and drama on television, film and stage. However, there is one dream she has yet to fulfill.

“I’ve always wanted to do a musical,” Metcalf says. “But my note range is only about seven notes. It would have to be a very specific piece. I don’t know if that will ever happen in my future, but I think it would be such a rush to be in a musical.”

“I’m going to manifest it,” she adds, laughing.

Metcalf can currently be seen on Broadway in the preview of Samuel D. Hunter’s “Little Bear Ridge Road,” a family drama about a woman (Metcalf) who reunites with her estranged cousin (Micah Stock). The play, which opens at the Booth Theater on October 30, marks Metcalf’s seventh collaboration with director Joe Mantello.

“I’m a little tired, but this is my favorite place to be,” Metcalf, who earned Tonys in 2017 and 2018 for her work in “A Doll’s House, Part 2” and “Three Tall Women,” tells me on the phone recently on a Friday afternoon. “We’ve had two previews and I’m going in this afternoon for notes. We’re fine-tuning things. This is my happy place.”

“Little Bear Ridge Road” follows the release of “Monster: The Ed Gein Story,” the Netflix series starring Charlie Hunnam as serial killer Ed Gein and Metcalf as his domineering and religiously fanatical mother Augusta Gein. After co-creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan pitched her the project, “I agreed to do it without even seeing a script,” Metcalf recalls.

This latest installment of Murphy’s ‘Monster’ franchise focuses on Ed’s relationship with his mother and how her abuse may have contributed to his gruesome murder spree in the mid-1950s. “It’s nature versus nurture, right?” says Metcalf. “I think it’s both cases for him.”

One of the series’ most powerful and disturbing scenes shows Augusta berating an adult Ed as he stands completely naked in front of her. “I’m sitting in that chair looking at a grown man, but I’m lecturing him like he’s seven years old,” Metcalf explains. “I don’t see him as a grown man, but I still see him under my care and under my sick supervision. It’s a mother-son teaching experience. It’s simplistic, but warped. But mentally it was helpful to see him like that.”

Metcalf gives a lot of credit to director Max Winkler. “Despite the subject matter and tone of the series, the shooting space was a lot of fun,” she says. “It’s hard to imagine this kind of work being fun, but that’s because it was very collaborative. Max is so open to accidents that can happen in the scene. He would give me things to do between takes. Some he used, some he didn’t. I really enjoyed working that way. The track itself was a beautiful set to work on, despite how dark it is.”

After filming “Monster” and a week before returning to Broadway, Metcalf wrapped up her next television project, Dan Levy and Rachel Sennott’s eight-episode Netflix mafia comedy “Big Mistakes,” about two siblings (Levy and Taylor Ortega) embroiled in organized crime. Metcalf plays their mother.

“I read the pilot and then I immediately wrote to my agent saying, ‘I 100% want to do this,’” says Metcalf, who earned three Emmys for her work on “Roseanne” and another for a guest role on “Hacks.” “I saw how unique it was for a half-hour, single-camera comedy.”

I tell Metcalf that I grew up in a mafia neighborhood in Queens, NY. “You’ll like this,” she says. “It’s very, very funny and very unexpected. I don’t think the audience ever anticipates where it’s going.”