Mt. Lebanon church hosts ‘Mindhunter’ actor, wife in ‘Love Letters’
Filming for the TV series “Mindhunter” brought actors Cotter Smith and his wife, Heidi Mueller Smith, to Pittsburgh last year.
“And really, within a week or two, we decided we wanted to get out of New York and move here,” Cotter said.
He plays FBI Unit Chief Shepard in the Netflix crime drama, for which second-season filming is scheduled to start in May. Having settled in Edgewood, Cotter – and Heidi, when she accompanies him – won’t have to travel far this time around.
“I think it has the best of all worlds for us,” Heidi said about the Pittsburgh area, which she finds to be similar to her native Milwaukee. “It has a city. It has wonderful food. It has theater and music, and natural beauty. Just everything we want, really.”
Speaking of theater, the Smiths are bringing their talents to Unitarian Universalist Church of the South Hills in Mt. Lebanon for “Love Letters.” A. R. Gurney’s two-person play chronicles a 50-year correspondence between Melissa Gardner and her childhood-friend-turned-love-interest, Andrew Makepeace Ladd III.
Performances are at 8 p.m. March 3 and 2 p.m. March 4 in the new 220-seat sanctuary of Sunnyhill, as the church also is known.
Heidi and Cotter have been performing “Love Letters” since just after they founded Milwaukee’s Cornerstone Theatre Company in 2001.
“The first thing we did was something we had written based on love letters between Anton Chekhov and his wife,” Heidi said, referencing the renowned Russian playwright and author. “So we sort of got on this love-letter kick.”
Gurney’s “Love Letters” soon followed.
“We first did it as not just a one-time thing, but we ran it for three weeks at our theater company,” Cotter said. “And it was such a hit, we realized that the play was more effective than we even knew, in terms of how audiences responded to it.”
Professionals were paying attention, too.
“Then I was asked by a different theater company to travel with it without Cotter,” Heidi recalled, “which was kind of sad.”
They subsequently reunited for “Love Letters” on many occasions, including a benefit performance for their church at the time in Wisconsin. Similarly, they are donating the proceeds from the March shows to Sunnyhill, where they have become part of the congregation.
“We were looking for a Unitarian home here,” Cotter explained, “and our first time with Rev. Jim, we knew right away, as soon as we listened to him speak.”
They actually met the Rev. Jim Magaw, Sunnyhill’s pastor, when the church was meeting off-site during the expansion and renovation that produced the new sanctuary, in which the Smiths look forward to performing.
Cotter’s performance in ‘Mindhunter’ beg the question: What is Shepard’s first name?
“I have one,” he acknowledged, “but they never use it. It’s Robert. He’s a very formal man. Nobody ever calls him that. They don’t even say, ‘Chief Shepard.’ They say, ‘Unit Chief Shepard,’ because he’s always so formal.
“But that’s the FBI.”
For more information, visit www.sunnyhill.org.