It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in “The Gilded Age,” for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of “The White Lotus,” which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs’ new drama, “His Three Daughters,” in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in “Winning Time” ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night’s choice: “Once Around,” with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?” on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
“It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the ’50s,” Coon says. “I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did that all day. I thought how crazy you must go when you’re alone like that, when your sole purpose is to have a baby.”
Coon grew up outside working-class Akron, Ohio, and Honey reminded her of some of her relatives — women either trapped in gender roles like Honey or strong-willed exceptions who defied them. Ever since, Coon has brought to life a wide array of women on screen with acute perceptiveness and fierce intelligence. She may be a character-actor chameleon resistant to movie stardom, but she doesn’t blend in. A movie tends to stand up on its feet when Coon is on screen.
“Celebrities are encouraged to be the star of the show, because that’s what they do. And I’m an actor. I’m not a celebrity,” says Coon. “I’m always going to be part of the ensemble. The storytelling should happen between people. I don’t like the other thing. I’m not interested in selfishness. It’s not fun.”
A conversation with Coon, however, is. She skips easily between self-deprecation and sincere reflection, existential doom and creative belief, book recommendations and parenting laments. As much as she’s an actor head to toe, Coon didn’t do it until her senior year of high school. In between trying half a dozen majors, she performed in plays in college and was coaxed into applying to graduate programs for acting by a professor.
“It felt like a lark. It felt like: What a great way to spend your 20s,” Coon says, smiling. “I thought: If it doesn’t work out, the world is big and interesting and I’ll just do something else. And it just kept working out. And it’s been really steady and slow and workmanlike.”
Like her character in “His Three Daughters,” Coon grew up with siblings. Her father ran the family auto parts store, and her mother was a nurse who often worked nights. Coon, the second oldest of five, often with her older sister babysat the young boys. “There was a lot of responsibility,” she says. “It was character building. It’s good to do laundry when you’re 8.”
In “His Three Daughters,” which begins streaming Friday on Netflix, three very different sisters are brought together in a small New York apartment and, with their ailing father in the next room, argue through some of their old divisions while wrestling with their developing grief. They start out a little like stereotypes – Lyonne is the stoner, Olsen the sweetly naive one and Coon the pushy, presumptuous older sister – but each character grows more nuanced. Coon is eager to praise Lyonne (“At the height of her powers”) and Olsen (“Everything she does is luminous”), and together they form an indelible trio in one of the year’s most lived-in dramas.
Asked if Coon was thinking about her own family in filming “His Three Daughters,” she lets out a laugh. “I mean, I was thinking of me!” she says. Coon adds that, unlike her character Katie, she’s sensitive and communicative.
“But I also act like an older sibling,” she says. “I’ve worked very hard in my life at things that have been challenging for me. I’ve chosen to go to therapy. I’ve chosen to work on myself. And I’m very successful. So I feel greatly entitled to give my siblings lots of advice whether they want it or not. (Laughs) And I have to say, my husband is so good at not giving unsolicited advice. He gives great advice, but you have to ask. And I find that shocking!”
Jacobs, the veteran indie filmmaker, delivered scripts for “His Three Daughters” simultaneously to his three stars. Actors are often valued by their box-office appeal, Jacobs notes, but Coon’s worth is harder to define.
“Me telling Natasha and Lizzie that I’m also sending the script to Carrie was a huge, huge factor for them,” Jacobs said. When shooting on “The Gilded Age” delayed Coon’s availability, Jacobs and the co-stars agreed they should all wait for her. Coon, whose films include Sean Durkin’s “The Nest” and the recent “Ghostbusters” movies, is more accustomed to going after what she wants.
“I’m happy to fight. I’m very scrappy. I’m an athlete. Bring it on!” Coon, a former soccer player, says. “But it’s nice to say: We both want this.”
“I always say: If I’m seeking something, I haven’t read it yet,” Coon says. “Because of where I am in the Hollywood hierarchy, the 10 movies that get made for women don’t include me. I have to fight for that stuff still. So, if I have ambition, it’s in fighting for the things that are good and the filmmakers who are challenging.”
In Coon’s performance, Jacobs sees her subtly playing qualities in Katie that don’t explicitly manifest into well into the film, as her character’s fears and vulnerabilities grow more evident. “You realize there’s been a step into something else, something magical, something that is the soul that I believe Carrie Coon brought to this character,” says Jacobs.
Death hovers over “His Three Daughters,” a subject that inevitably brings Coon to climate change. She worries deeply about its exponentially expanding impact and what it might mean for her children’s lives. Coon starts tearing up while she wonders: “Some of the decisions like, ‘where to go to college’ maybe don’t matter to them. Perhaps what we need to do is maximize our time together.”
Coon just spent six months in Thailand shooting the third season of “The White Lotus” where, she says, “the ocean was a hot bath, with plastic from last summer washing up on the shore.”
For her, it casts a different light on her work.
“On one hand, I’m grateful that I get to provide some joy in the form of ‘The Gilded Age’ for example. But I’m also complicit in the pacification machine that’s keeping people’s heads down. So I’m conflicted about that,” Coon says. “Revolution is what’s called for. But I don’t think the human race is up for it. So I really wrestle with my own inaction in the face of that helplessness.”
Coon can’t stop from laughing at herself. “I’m basically a doomsday prepper without an insulated basement for my supplies or an AR-15 to protect them,” she says.
Another way to look at Coon’s concern is as an extension of her interest, as an actor, in the human condition. The global community is maybe another ensemble that Coon would like to play a role in, and see through to the next act.
“As an artist, I don’t know how you can be ignorant about it,” says Coon. “You have to engage with those questions. It’s life and death. It’s the full scope of human existence.”
