Things were different—for the world and for Carrie Coon—in 2012, when she made her Broadway debut in a Tony-winning revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. The actor was only four years out of grad school when she booked the part of Honey at Chicago’s famed Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where the production originated and where she met her now husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, who was playing George. Coon earned a Tony nomination for her performance and quickly made a home for herself on the small screen, first in dramas like The Leftovers and Fargo and then on the lavish series The Gilded Age and The White Lotus.
Now, Letts has brought Coon back to Broadway with the Main Stem debut of his 1996 play Bug, a skin-crawling portrayal of people on the fringes. The show’s atmosphere of paranoia and mistrust seemed terribly prophetic in 2020, when this production—also from Steppenwolf—opened and closed early due to the pandemic shutdown. (The theater restaged it the following year.)
“The first time we did it, it started off like a rock concert,” Coon tells Vogue. “Then, as the pandemic was starting, it got deadly silent as people were contemplating the source and the impact of what was coming to us. Then the second time was the rise of the QAnon conspiracy movement. Life was so different. But of course, with a good play, the world changes around it. The play is essentially the same, but now people hear the stuff about machines and how we’ll never really be safe again, and that’s how people are feeling—really unsafe.”
Though Coon was 13 weeks postpartum for the 2021 remount (she and Letts have two children), she felt ready to fight then. She adds: “We probably felt safer four years ago. In fact, I thought, Why are we doing a play? We should be out in the streets. And now I feel like doing a play is just about the most subversive and radical thing I could be doing.”
Speaking via video call this week, the actor described the mysterious bruises she and her castmates have discovered on their bodies—physical proof, she thinks, of her rage against the machine. Despite the toll Bug exacts, however, Coon is in exceptionally good humor, if with the blinking optimism of a new year in an unstable reality. She’s happy to be back on Broadway and thrilled to be your meme queen, but there are caveats. Ahead of Bug’s opening at the Friedman Theatre, Coon told Vogue what’s on her mind.
Vogue: What was your relationship to this play before this production, or before meeting Tracy?
Carrie Coon: Before meeting Tracy, I didn’t really know the play. I went to graduate school for acting, but I had no theatrical education. I didn’t grow up around theater, I didn’t really know that many plays. My audition for graduate school was from The Heidi Chronicles, which is from the ’70s, you know what I mean? When August: Osage County hit Chicago [in 2007] and was all the rage, I was doing Shakespeare in Wisconsin at the American Players Theatre and I thought, Good for that woman. It wasn’t until we got together that I went back and started to read some of his earlier pieces.
I’d always heard Bug described as a body-horror thriller, whereas—I don’t know if I picked up on it this way because of QAnon and other recent conspiracies—I felt this production foregrounded despair and paranoia.
That is a credit to when David Cromer takes on a revival. The other thing is you had Michael Shannon in the original, and he is a really electrifying and unusual presence. When Mike Shannon comes out and says, “I’m not an axe murderer,” the whole audience goes, Oh yes, he is, and that puts the focus of the play on a different aspect. In Namir Smallwood, what we have is this very quiet, very watchable gentleness. At first you may think, Good for them, these two damaged people found each other, and then it starts to unravel.
What gets revealed in this particular iteration is the psychological realism of that descent of someone who is maybe suffering from mental illness and addiction. Tracy would say this is his most well-researched play. We’ve had psych nurses come in and go, “I pegged him immediately, and this is exactly the kind of monologuing, ranting, raving”—this parasitic delusion—“that we experience in our patients.”
I have to assume Tracy has discussed Bug with you. Is that inhibiting?
I know all about the history of the play. When we go to London, he’s like, “And here’s the theater where this premiered,” et cetera. I’m responsible for organizing all of our files, so I’ve organized all the clippings, articles, and reviews. So I know a lot about the play’s history, but you can’t bring that into the room with you. That’s not my responsibility. My responsibility is to be directed by David Cromer, who’s going to have his way into this play. It has nothing to do with Tracy, but every now and then, he’s there to give a little hint about a crack pipe. When he is around, he always gives me one or two really helpful notes. I find it very supportive to have him there.
How does it feel to return to Broadway after 12 years?
What I love about this production is that so many of my friends are making their Broadway debuts after decades in Chicago theater. That’s always really moving to me because I went through it myself. But you get there, and you realize that, like every other theater you’ve been in, the dressing rooms are really shitty and the rhythm is the same. Like, you know how to do a play, you’re just doing it in what we refer to as the major leagues, even though it doesn’t necessarily mean the best work is being done there—just the most commercial. There’s something sly about coming in with something that’s not overtly commercial and doing it on Broadway, but it’s always fun to be part of the club. You’re all running around the same neighborhoods, eating at the same little cafés and Thai places on 9th Avenue, and sending each other “Happy Opening” faxes.
Does being back on Broadway trigger any nostalgia about how your life and career have changed since Virginia Woolf? Or is it just another venue you’re playing?
It is wild that it’s taken me 12 years to get back to Broadway. I would have maybe expected to be back on Broadway sooner, just because that production was really well received and because I’ve been really good about going back to the theater. It’s an important touchstone, if you’re a theater actor, to go back to that, because you are ultimately the arbiter of taste in that setting. You’re not waiting for a director or an editor to tell you they have what they need; you are responsible for making sure the story gets told. So yeah, maybe I would have expected to be back, but it’s a great privilege. It’s something that every theater actor dreams of doing, so I don’t take it for granted that I’m there, and it brings back fond memories. That was such a huge, seismic shift in my life. The fact that that play went to Broadway at all was not guaranteed. It was quite a surprise, in fact. And I met my husband on that play. I started my TV and film career because I was in New York meeting with casting directors. I booked The Leftovers and Gone Girl just in those months after the Tony Awards. It launched the rest of my life.
I was going to say, you’ve been busy on screen. Would you have made time to go back to Broadway while doing all these series?
It was four years ago that I first did Bug, and I had not gone more than two years without being on stage before that break. I’ve been pretty good about it, either in Chicago or Off Broadway. I’ll always make time for it. It makes me better. Sometimes TV and film can lull you into some complacency, because it’s not your responsibility to tell the story. It’s out of your hands, in a way. Not to mention the fact that sometimes TV and film don’t ask much of our bodies, especially as a woman.
How do you mean?
You’re more likely to see a male action hero than a female one. Even in what we think are the greatest years of cinema for women, you’ll come to find out, statistically, it’ll be the fewest female-led films in a decade. That was true the year Barbie came out. I feel like we’re taking more risks on TV, but I have found that The Leftovers was pretty extraordinary in that [my character] Nora Durst was so embodied and went through so many different iterations. She was violent and got shot by a prostitute and rolled down a hill. It was really physically demanding, in a way I just don’t often find work to be. Gilded Age is demanding in a different way—we have to wear those costumes, and that is a kind of challenge—but it’s not like I’m gonna get in a fistfight.
Is there any strenuous role that’s your North Star in that sense?
I don’t know that I’ve read it yet. I’ve been pitching it. I have, in the past, pitched a television show that would be an action show. Maybe it’s a cliché that actors all wanna do action ultimately, but my favorite days on set are days like on The White Lotus, where I got to hang out of a window 12 times.
It sounds like a cliché until you see Charlize Theron do Atomic Blonde—
And you’re like, Absolutely! That person belongs in that genre. Or like when I went viral for sprinting away from gunshots in White Lotus. Like, yes, this is the kind of thing I would love to do. But no one’s asking, you know?
When you were last on Broadway, you weren’t yet dealing with gay meme culture, which has to feel like its own other universe. Are you sensing those fans coming to Bug and wondering what they just saw?
Right. [Laughs.] And I so appreciate the memes—thanks, guys. That’s one of the most beautiful things about doing the play right now, that there are so many people coming who have never been to a play before, especially young people. I had a young man, really young, come up and say it was incredible. I said, “Yeah, wasn’t it interesting to experience a story in space with other people, where you could make sound and hear their response?” He goes, “Yeah, and there were no phones.”
Is that interesting to think about, that one aspect of your work cannot be memed at all while the other will be completely—
Oh, I can’t think about what’s a meme, I’ve got two kids.
So how did the running one make it back to you, for example?
I’m on Twitter, I read reviews—Tracy and I always have. I haunt the Reddit, I’ve said it. They all know I’m out there. [Playfully.] I know when people say mean shit about me or talk about how old I look.
Have people been coming up with conspiracy theories about the play?
I don’t know if I’ve seen conspiracy theories, but I’ve seen whether people think it’s relevant or worth seeing. It’s interesting to see how things like nudity play. This country is quite repressed when it comes to stuff like that. We will mow kids down in school with an AR-15, but nudity is where we draw the line. Our relationship to violence and our puritanical mores are always really interesting to experience when you’re doing a show, and the way it lands with young people versus more seasoned theatergoers. But yeah, I believe in knowing how your work is landing in the world. I find it to be a test of my strength of will to be able to continue in spite of it, I guess. There’s an argument to be made for not taking in that stuff, but I also feel like it’s pretty good for the ego to have to absorb it and let it go and realize that we’re all going to die and it doesn’t really matter.
I guess you don’t want to be too hermetically sealed.
Yeah, I mean, we’re literally just gonna die. So who cares?
See, but you have to be careful saying that, because that’s been my default answer to everything lately, and—
What, that we’re all going to die? I think that’s a really healthy attitude. If you look at some of the great religious traditions, contemplating your death is a really good recipe for living your life because you don’t want to take it for granted. When I say we’re all going to die, it sounds dark, but I mean it as a very enlivening attitude. My life is not always gonna look like this. My life’s gonna change. I’m gonna get older. I’m not gonna be memeable. I will become a grandmother, if I’m lucky, and my career will wind down, and I’ll do character parts sometimes, and maybe I’ll do some theater, but I’m not gonna be in the cultural conversation in the same way. So I feel like it’s probably good to practice accepting that now so that you can enjoy it while it’s happening.
Does any part of you feel a small death every time you do a live performance?
No. You know what’s nice about being an actor? If you’re a banker, no one’s gonna ask you to smash something and kiss somebody and roll around on the floor.
They’ll ask you not to.
Exactly, it’s all very prohibitive. When you’re an actor, those prohibitions don’t exist in your life, and I find that when I do the play, I feel really fully expressed by the end of it. That’s some really good energetic stuff to get out, and I feel more healthy for having done it, as opposed to less. I know some actors have a hard time shaking a character or letting it go, but I’ve never found that to be the case. I always found myself very grateful for the invitation and wishing more people in their normal lives had it.
Which of the wigs you’ve worn recently has been the most comfortable?
Wigs are never comfortable. I can wear a wig for a while, but when you get to hour 16, that’s when you’re about to have a panic attack. When you hear people say their makeup took five hours, that’s not a small thing to take on, energetically. I could wear a corset all day, but the heels and the wig really are what get to you. The Bertha wig [on The Gilded Age] is fantastic. It’s so great that, when we started shooting season one during the pandemic and everybody was masked, they all recognized me but I couldn’t have picked them out of a lineup because I never saw their faces. And then whenever they saw me in real life, like at a party, nobody knew who I was because they all just thought I had long, luxurious brown hair. They weren’t expecting some gray-haired bob.
Do you like a transformation?
I do. It’s like dress-up, right? It’s the best part of the job. As a younger actor, and this is probably pretty common, I was very cerebral—lots of reading and research. The older I get, the more outside-in I am now. You find that the clothes and wigs and everything change you from the outside, and that’s most of the work.
Is that a getting-over-yourself type of thing? Where it’s not so much about the research, et cetera….
I can’t speak to everyone’s process. Some marvelous actors put themselves through a lot to get there, and they’re amazing, so it’s working. But I find it liberating. I don’t have the time I had when I was 26, when I started. I got two little kids, I have a marriage, I have a household that I’m running. Not to mention the fact that, in this business, sometimes you don’t get a part until it’s two weeks before you start. I’m not Meryl Streep, I don’t get a year to prepare for something. That’s not how I get work. So you just have to let it go. You have to accept where you are in the process and just try to be present in the circumstances. And an invitation to presence is as good an acting hack as anything. It really is about being present in the moment and able to respond to what’s happening in front of you. It’s not really about what’s happened inside of you, it’s what’s been happening between you. That’s the acting that I find most invigorating and interesting to watch and certainly more compelling to do.
I have to ask, since I’m looking at my Blu-ray collection now and I know that you and Tracy are big champions of physical media: What’s your media diet while you’re in the show?
Normally, if I’m home, Tracy and I watch a movie every night. We watched Bacurau last night. Tracy’s presenting an award to the filmmaker [Kleber Mendonça Filho], and we hadn’t watched it yet and always try to do our due diligence. Tracy picks everything, that’s our arrangement. I go downstairs, I have no idea what we’re watching, and then he puts something on, and I watch it— which is, for me, as somebody who has to make a lot of decisions in a day, a very liberating thing. But now that I’m doing the show, I stay in the city once it’s over at 10. So when I’m alone, I can’t make any decisions, let alone turn on the television in a hotel or an apartment that’s unfamiliar to me. It never works, so I give up. I totally give up, and I just read my book. Right now I am reading The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, and I’m reading a book in galleys that they’re asking me to record the audiobook for, by an author I really love.
I sort of struggle with my Blu-rays.
Because of storage?
Storage, and everyone says everything is streaming.
Yes, you will not have access anymore. It’s a huge part of our [collecting]. We probably are up to 13,000 now. We get DVDs every day. Tracy gets them delivered every day, and there is stuff we have that I don’t think people will ever see again, stuff that won’t ever be available to the public for streaming ever again. There are gatekeepers. Whenever there are gatekeepers, you’re going to have limitations, and Tracy doesn’t want to have a limitation. He doesn’t buy sports cars, drink, do drugs, buy clothes, so it’s fine. That’s his one vice, and it’s pretty innocuous.
As someone who straddles stage and screen, are you completely the other way about stage performances, in that they should remain ephemeral?
I believe anything that gives people access is pretty special and pretty important. Tracy and I both grew up in small towns. If we didn’t have movies, we wouldn’t know Virginia Woolf. That’s why Tracy has always been positive about having his plays adapted to film, even though it’s hard and doesn’t always translate. He believes in it because some little kid in Oklahoma might see something and be inspired by something they wouldn’t normally have access to.
A film rather than a recorded performance of a play?
Yeah, of course. During the pandemic, the only way to access live performance was if it was recorded and cast widely. For people who are immunocompromised or have accessibility issues, having access to culture is actually really important. When my son was two during the pandemic, he hadn’t had screens before, and one of the few things we let him watch was orchestras and ballet, because that was the only way to see them. There’s something to be said for recording live performances and making them available. They did that amazing screening of Good Night, and Good Luck, which David Cromer directed, and so many people watched that. That’s really powerful. It’s still a collective experience, so I’m not against it. It is a different medium; I don’t think it entirely translates, and nothing compares to the experience of being in a room with other people.
The responses in Bug are very vocal, and that is a lot of fun. We had a woman in the audience the other night who kept going, “Oh, no, no, no, no,” before things happened, and the whole audience would laugh at her, and then they would tune back into what was about to happen, which she had obviously clocked. I hope that, as we feel more isolated by our devices, we will be hungry for live, in-person experiences. The only jobs that can’t really be replaced by AI are gonna be caregiving jobs, right? It’s touch, it’s interaction. It’ll always have a place. It’s the oldest profession, I’m fond of saying.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.