Pam MacKinnon is one of most renowned directors on Broadway today. She won a Tony Award for Best Director of a Play in 2013 for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” making her one of only a handful of women to receive that honor. She also earned a nod in 2012 for “Clybourne Park.” Her recent credits include “Amélie” and a revival of Wendy Wasserstein’s “The Heidi Chronicles” on Broadway.

“The Parisian Woman” is MacKinnon’s latest work to hit the Broadway stage. It was written by Beau Willimon, the Academy Award and Emmy-nominated creator of “House of Cards,” and stars Uma Thurman, Blair Brown, Phillipa Soo, Josh Lucas, and Marton Csokas.

We spoke to MacKinnon about her new show, her collaborations, and Broadway’s glass ceiling.

“The Parisian Woman” is currently playing at the Hudson Theatre.

This interview has been edited.

W&H: Let’s talk about “The Parisian Woman.” How did this play come to you?

PM: About five years ago, Beau Willimon was working on this play at South Coast Repertory, a theater in Southern California, when he approached me about doing a world premiere. This was a play that originally started at downtown’s Flea but had yet to have a production. It was an adaptation of a 19th century play. Beau and South Coast Rep, a theater I had worked at a lot, were interested in re-writing and putting it through a new play process.

W&H: Has it gone through a lot of changes? It’s so very timely.

PM: There was a huge rewrite in December 2016, just one month after the Presidential election. Beau really wears two hats quite firmly — one as a writer and one as an activist. The Presidential election had really rocked the world, and he recognized that [in] this play, which is about marriage, ambition, and love, and is set in Beltway D.C. politics. He thought it would be disingenuous not to go in and rewrite it for the times we are living in because this Presidency is really particular. The pre-rewrite was more generic D.C. politics.

W&H: It really hits the heart because of what is going on in the world.

PM: I feel that in the house. The third or fourth line in the show is “What, you do Twitter?” and the other person responds, “Well, if it’s good enough for the President, it’s good enough for me.” The audience just goes “Ahhhhh.” That truly is the exchange.

W&H: Was it challenging to bring this type of show to the Broadway stage in 2017?

PM: My lead producers got behind this play a couple of years ago, prior to the post-election rewrite. It was a play that was political but not politically charged. The stakes were not as high — not just in terms of the political surround, but even the relationship between the mother and daughter.

Yes, it was a moneyed, old guard family in politics but the politics between the mother and daughter were never explicit and now the election [really emphasized the fact that this] is very much a mixed family [in terms of their politics]. The mother is clearly a Republican and the daughter is a liberal Democrat and there’s conflict between them. For me, that is very exciting. Scene 2 of this play has three very opinionated women talking about politics.

I feel grateful to have this kind of backing as there are fewer and fewer new plays on Broadway. It’s a very risky, difficult world out there.

W&H: What is your collaboration like with Uma Thurman and the other women in the play?

PM: It’s Uma’s first Broadway play. She was in an off-Broadway show about 17 years ago. [“The Misanthrope” at Classic Stage Company in 1999.] She did a reading of the old draft with Blair Brown and that was very exciting. It worked and we knew we could cast around her.

I’ve known Blair for many years and this is the first time we’ve ever worked together. I directed a play downtown called “Bach at Leipzig” 15 years ago. She had seen it and approached me to someday work together, which was very exciting. She actually did all the readings of this play that I put together with Uma. She’s just so smart and so generous and has so much stagework under her belt that it was fantastic to pair them together, to have a real stage veteran there, like a rock. Blair has both the pleasure and duty of playing someone in this play world who does not share her character’s politics. Sometimes she’ll say “Why can’t I remember this line? It’s so antithetical to what I really believe!” But she knows that it’s the job.

I enjoyed continuing my relationship with Phillipa [Soo] with this play. She’s whip smart and steady, and provides the story with a complicated mix of idealistic youth, emotional naïveté, ambition, and political gravitas. I believe she could be President in 15 years but also see a 25-year-old [when I look at her].

W&H: You’ve worked on several plays with strong female characters, such as “The Heidi Chronicles,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf,” and “Amélie.” Are you attracted to plays about the female struggle and patriarchy?

PM: I’m attracted to plays about messy human beings and that’s both men and women. I want conflict — both internal and between characters — that is fully fleshed out, horrible as well as as wonderful, all-in-one package kind of people. I’m not attracted to plays that use people as functionary, and so that makes me attracted to plays that have strong, interesting women — ones that are fleshed out.

W&H: You talked about your collaboration with Willimon. What have been some of your other important collaborations to date?

PM: I feel very, very fortunate to have had Edward Albee in my life. It was a very important, artistic relationship. I worked with Edward on some of his classic plays. He gave me brand new plays of his. That was a long, long, long-term relationship that really fed me as an artist and introduced me to a lot of theaters around the country and to working off-Broadway, a big before and after. He was a dear, dear friend, and a huge playwright, and a huge artist to have had in my life.

W&H: What is it like being a female theater director today?

PM: As you can imagine, if you turn the question on yourself, it’s a hard question to answer because my experience is of course as a woman, but it is also my experience so it’s hard to compare.

I do think that there are a lot of women directors working right now, and that is really exciting. But I also recognize that there are not that many women working on Broadway, and that is dreadful. The perception is that there are lot of women on Broadway, but [that’s not the case]. The Broadway statistics of men to women as directors has been frozen at the same percentage. When Julie Taymor won a Tony for “The Lion King” and Gary Hynes won one for “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” in 1998, it was like a glass ceiling had broken, but if you look at the percentages across the Broadway field, it hasn’t changed.

However, I do feel that it has to [change] because a lot is coming up regionally as well as off-Broadway. There are more training programs and early career [opportunities], so I do think that there is much more parity. But there is still that glass ceiling and that responsibility lies with the producers.

This is a hiring moment. Right behind it is a wave of really interesting people that at a certain point cannot be denied. They are hugely capable and have a breadth of experience and capacity. I have to think it’s about to shift and change. It’s a continued hiring practice. For people of color, men and women, that’s an even sorrier state of affairs.

W&H: Lastly, what’s next for you?

PM: My next full production is a world premiere by a playwright called Jordan Harrison at Playwrights Horizons. He’s a writer I’ve known a lot of years. I was involved with a play of his called “Marjorie Prime” that I did not direct. Anne Kauffman directed. That play was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. I’m really excited to be finally working with this writer.