Carrie Coon on 'The White Lotus' Season 3: 'It Was 'Very, Very Challenging'
Carrie Coon didn’t necessarily have a better summer than you did. But there’s an excellent chance she had a wetter summer.
The versatile and acclaimed actress—up for an Emmy Award for her role on The Gilded Age—is still drying out from the torrential downpours in Thailand while filming the much-anticipated third season of HBO’s The White Lotus.
“It was very, very challenging,” Coon says. “It created a lot of obstacles because we had to keep moving around every time there was bad weather. I think we moved around nine times, so the logistics were tough because who wants to see rainy, cold Thailand?”
Still, Coon adds that she had some “wild nights” with the eclectic cast, which includes Michelle Monaghan, Walton Goggins, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Jason Isaacs, Leslie Bibb and returnee Natasha Rothwell. “It’s like we remade society and had our own culture,” she adds. “And everyone was so far from home. It unmoors you.”
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Coon, 43, had a much different experience shooting her latest movie, His Three Daughters. The quietly moving drama (in select theaters Sept. 6 and streaming on Netflix Sept. 20) focuses on three sisters—played by Coon, Elizabeth Olsen and Natasha Lyonne—who gather in their ailing dad’s New York City apartment to spend time with him before he passes. Coon portrays Katie, the Type-A organizer who can’t help but bicker with her two sisters about everything from their childhood to the food in the refrigerator. The film takes place almost entirely within the residence.
“It’s a very specific little movie so the three of us all came into the process with the understanding that we were all in this together,” she says. “We were very prepared and we attacked it! That small space forced a lot of intimacy.”
If the Ohio native talks like a veteran stage actress, that’s because she is one. Coon started her career in theater and was even nominated for a Tony for a 2012 revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Since breaking out playing Ben Affleck’s no-nonsense twin sister in the 2014 hit Gone Girl, she’s showed off her considerable talent in prestige TV projects like The Leftovers, Fargo and The Gilded Age while appearing in films like The Post, The Nest and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. She’s also been married to playwright and actor Tracy Letts since 2013 and they share two small children.
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While calling in from her family’s home in the New York suburbs, Coon tells all—minus a few White Lotus spoilers!—to Parade.
Netflix
Mara Reinstein: First off, congrats on your Emmy nomination.
Carrie Coon: Thank you! I was really surprised!
Are you just saying that?
No, I was genuinely surprised. I was with my parents. My brother and sister had driven in. My son hurt himself and was screaming, and I hadn't had any breakfast, so I completely forgot it was happening until my agent called. It shows how little I was actually thinking about it. But the real shock was that Tracy also got a nomination [for his one-episode role on Winning Time]. He said, “This has to be a mistake.” I consider it a Lifetime Achievement Award.
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And why did you want to co-star in His Three Daughters?
I thought that the script, which was delivered to me by hand, was so refreshing in that it didn't feel overly sentimental. The relationship dynamic felt real and true. Also, I just loved that the movie is structured so that the sisters go on the same journey as the audience. They start off as stereotypes, and then just as their point of view about each other gets complicated, so does the point of view of the audience of all the sisters. I hadn't seen anything structurally so sound in a long time.
Not to get too morose, but what are your thoughts on death and dying? The theme runs through most of the movie.
I think about death all the time because of the state of the world and particularly the state of the environment. I would say that I’m also vaguely Buddhist in my spiritual life, and so I think it's actually really healthy to think about that a lot. I like to look around on a set and imagine that someday all of these people that have gathered together won't be here anymore. And that alone is enough to make each moment special, and it's also enough to sort of take you outside of yourself and appreciate the larger workings of the universe going on around you. So I find that thinking about death actually keeps me very present when I'm working.
Did you know Natasha and Elizabeth at all before filming?
No, we had never met each other! But I knew what kind of artists I was working with.
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How did you not know Natasha? You’re both cool New Yorkers!
No, no. She’s part of the scene, and I don't go anywhere! It was a really fun and interesting time to get to work with Natasha, because she's really firing on all cylinders. And I feel like Lizzie Olsen’s best work is ahead of her. She's so young and she's so extraordinary.
You don’t think your best work is ahead of you?
I mean, I hope so. But I'm at the age now where I've been doing this long enough that I have this strange nostalgia; I'm very moved by people younger than me and when an actor gets their very first big job. When that happened to me for Gone Girl, I was surrounded by incredibly loving and supportive people.
Gone Girl was quite the big break.
It was my movie debut and definitely my big break. I'll always be grateful because that led to a big shift in my career. The only person on that project who knew me was [author and screenwriter] Gillian Flynn because she lived in Chicago and saw me on stage in Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Your husband famously owns thousands of DVDs. Can you name three recent movies that you watched together?
Oh my gosh. I was in Thailand, so he watched movies with our babysitter, who's an actress. He showed her An Unmarried Woman [from 1978] and Deliverance [from 1972]. Oh, my God, that's like an extraordinary film. And then I'd say the other one that was most impactful for her while I was gone was [1975’s] Dog Day Afternoon, which she also hadn't seen. If I were going to champion three classics from our movie collection, I recommend those!
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Where do you even store them all?
Well, when we got this house, we had to make sure we had enough space to put in a theater. So we put in a theater with a nice projector and that room is lined with shelves. Then outside that room is another set of shelves. We can never have enough shelves.
And, come on, can you say anything about what we’re going to see next year with White Lotus? Even a sentence?
Nothing! But you’ll see soon enough.
His Three Daughters will stream exclusively on Netflix beginning on Sept. 20.
Next, Max Shares Footage from 'The White Lotus' Season 3: Everything to Know
