Carrie Coon credits patience for her acting success
Carrie Coon knows about the art of the slow burn. After decades on stage, the Ohio native — daughter of an ER nurse and auto parts supplier — is finally an overnight success.
She notes the second glances in the grocery store line or at school pickup. Her name is in the atmosphere.
Coon is 44 — and that’s part of the win here. “You have to do what you love … and the timing will work out,” she says. “You never know what you will be when you truly grow up.”
Currently, she is celebrating back-to-back wins in the form of roles in a pair of critically acclaimed TV series: “White Lotus” and “The Gilded Age.”
The major TV star life? Not exactly. Coon watched that last episode of “White Lotus” just like everyone else: At home in her sweats.
“I was in my basement with my husband,” she says. “I have a very regular life, which is a wonderful thing to me. I’m a working mom,” says Coon, who also earned raves for her roles in “The Leftovers,” “Gone Girl” and “Fargo.”
In “The Gilded Age,” streaming its third season this summer on Max, she plays 1880s socialite Bertha Russell, a nouveau riche woman who covets social status among the blue bloods.
Then there’s her other high-profile role this year: as a modern-day lawyer on an emotionally dicey girls’ trip to Thailand in the most recent season of “White Lotus.” “I love work that examines how, as we age, life changes,” Coon says. “The show asks, ‘Are you willing to see past your ideas about a person to see the person right in front of you?’”
She lives in Pound Ridge, New York, with her husband, famed playwright Tracy Letts, and their two young children. Her good life advice:
Keep going
“I grew up in a family of five kids and basically wore my brothers clothes until I was 17,” Coon recalls. “I had short hair and played sports. I also loved movies. I grew up watching old films. My grandfather’s father ran a movie house in Akron, Ohio. … You don’t become an actress when you’re from where I’m from in the Midwest. I declared business and Japanese as my college majors — although that lasted about two weeks. I didn’t know acting could be a career at first, but I jumped in. I didn’t know enough to be afraid, so I kept going.”
The acting bug
“I had a friend in elementary school named Laura, and her parents took us to the Akron Civic Theater. It had the clouds and stars on the ceiling. It was so magical and old in there,” she says. “We saw the play ‘Babes in Toyland.’ I was 10 years old and the kids on stage were my age. I asked, ‘How come they are allowed to do that?’ ” Her mother gave the OK for Coon to audition, though she didn’t drive much. “She was like, ‘Yes, you can try out for that play if you get a ride.’ ”
Sunny outlook
Going from filming “White Lotus” in Thailand to “The Gilded Age” in New York City posed a unique problem. Coon had to stay out of the sun because rich women in 1880s New York didn’t go around with island tans. “I would venture out to the beach and swim in the evening, which was so relaxing,” she says. “It was cooler and quite beautiful. The rest of the time, I walked around in long sleeves and pants.”
She had 48 hours after wrapping “Lotus” before she had to go back in time to film “The Gilded Age.” Of her character Bertha, Coon says, “She’s the villain, but she wins. She’s driving the story.”
Be vulnerable
Her advice for those ladies on vacation in “White Lotus”: Be real. “If these women had walked into the villa and said, ‘Listen, this is what’s going on with me right now,’ and started off in an honest and authentic way, then it would have been a very different vacation,” Coon says. “But that’s not what happened. Everyone was pretending. I’m afraid everyone can relate to pretending to be living an extraordinary life, whereas everyone’s actually feeling left out.
“The key is to show your vulnerabilities to your friends. Vulnerable is real.”
A love story
Back in 2010, Coon was cast in the Steppenwolf production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” that eventually made it to Broadway. She met Letts through that work. They married in 2013 in his hospital room after an emergency gallbladder surgery. “It was the greatest wedding ever,” she says. “We married in a place all about life and death.”
Move it
One of her most memorable “White Lotus” scenes involves dancing in a Thailand club. Coon really cut loose. “One of the great pleasures as an actress is whenever I get asked to do anything physical,” she shares, “because so often a woman is just standing in a room, and that’s very boring.”
Celebrate aging
“Look, I’m getting older,” Coon acknowledges. “You have to be able to sit with it and accept that you’re going to get old, which is something to celebrate.”
It’s not about you
“When I was in graduate school, I had a professor who was dying of cancer,” she recalls. “He would say to me, ‘Dry it up, Carrie. It doesn’t matter if you cry. It matters if they cry.’ I had to learn, it’s not about me.”
Use your skills
“I’m a good listener. It’s definitely part of being an artist,” Coon says. “It’s one of my super-talents, and it’s important in life to recognize your super-talents.”
