On Letts: Brioni tuxedo and Allen Edmonds oxfords. On Coon: Giorgio Armani gown; Chopard earrings and bracelet; and Giuseppe Zanotti wedges.
The impact of the pandemic on the arts was immediate and far-reaching—its toll, as well as the work it inspires, will be felt for decades to come. But for artists who live on stage, in front of live audiences, the past year has been uniquely and creatively devastating. The Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and actor Tracy Letts and his wife, actress Carrie Coon, experienced this acutely. In a March 2021 New York Times article surveying the effects of the pandemic on 75 artists and their output, Letts’s honesty stood out: “I’ve made nothing,” he said. “From a creative standpoint, this year for me has been a dust storm.” His latest play, The Minutes, was supposed to open on Broadway just three days after everything shut down. (The play is now scheduled to open in March 2022.) Instead, he and Coon found themselves camped out at home like the rest of us, trying to stay safe and occupy their now-three-year-old son, Haskell. As Letts grew more and more antsy, Coon stepped in with a directive: “Read books, watch movies, cook dinner, and take care of our boy.”
Fortunately, both Letts and Coon were eventually able to get back to work. Letts has signed on to play Los Angeles Lakers coach Jack McKinney in Adam McKay’s upcoming HBO series about the rise of the legendary basketball team’s 1980s dynasty, led by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson, and Coon recently wrapped on the network’s forthcoming historical drama The Gilded Age, from Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes. They’ve also been on a collaborative kick: While on lockdown, they started their own production company and are expecting their second child this summer. “It’s plenty,” Coon says.
Here, the couple discuss yearning to get back to the theater and how they support each other in work, love, and parenthood.
TRACY LETTS: It’s one thing to take time off from work; it’s another thing to have time off forced on you. The time off was not a choice. I’ve talked to Carrie for years about wanting to take a break or take some time away from work, and then when the pandemic happened, Carrie was like, “Well, you’ve got it.” I was like, “Yeah… this is not what I was talking about.”
CARRIE COON: When I got pregnant with our son four years ago, Tracy really went into overdrive. It was as though there was some biological imperative to take care of his family that kicked in. He just said yes to everything. We’d been working really hard. We were both doing plays when the pandemic started. I was doing Bug [one of Letts’s plays] at the Steppenwolf theater in Chicago, and Tracy was going to open The Minutes on Broadway the weekend that everything shut down. It was also our son Haskell’s second birthday. Tracy wasn’t supposed to be there, but he came back to Chicago when Broadway shut down and made it in time. We were both in what I would refer to as “performance rhythm.” Your body gets into this really specific rhythm of work: I was getting up in the morning with Haskell and then going to the theater around 5 p.m. to take a nap and do this show. You’re doing that six days a week. And it just suddenly ended for both of us. Normally you have some time to process that, that a transition is coming, and then say goodbye to everybody. But it was just all so sudden. It was a shock to our bodies.
TL: When Broadway shut down and my show was canceled, we were three days away from opening. We’re very fortunate. We didn’t have a lot of financial pressure on us. I could go back to my home in Chicago with my wife and kid. And so you think, “Well, I can’t feel bad about what I’m going through because I know so many people are going through far, far worse”—not only in terms of their economic lives, but of course there are people who are dying. But it was probably three or four months later that I realized, “Oh, man, that was devastating.”
The theater at its best does something that movies and TV and other forms of storytelling can’t do, which is to remind us of the flesh and blood, the humanity that’s in the room with you.
— Tracy Letts —
CC: It was grief. Tracy had been grieving and didn’t really realize that he’d been grieving. We already lived in a country that was, especially under the [Trump] administration, very hostile to the arts. We were already struggling. And then we’re having this racial reckoning in all of our institutions, which was so necessary, and we couldn’t be together to have that reckoning. To not be able to do that in a room together like we were accustomed to doing— everything was just an extra layer of devastation on top of what was already a systemic issue.
TL: It’s one of the great things about the theater, that we’re all live people in a room. The theater at its best does something that movies and TV and other forms of storytelling can’t do, which is to remind us of the flesh and blood, the humanity that’s in the room with you. There’s something deeply personal and cathartic about that experience.
CC: There are studies done where people are together at a live performance and they actually start breathing at the same rate.
TL: Their hearts sync up.
CC: And breathing was the most dangerous thing you could do all of a sudden. There was so much fear and uncertainty.
TL: As terrible as the pandemic year has been, there’s also been a kind of realignment of priorities. I mean, we spent pretty much every moment of our child’s second year with him. I don’t want to say we’re closer to our boy than we would have been, but certainly the attachment he’s had with us is really strong, and so to see him try to integrate now into a little preschool… It’s weird.
CC: I thought, “Well, surely I’m going to have to accompany him that first day. There’s no way he could ever be able to get through that.” And the teachers said, “Actually, that’s your problem.” I always thought I was so progressive and loose about things. But I found that I was scared. I was scared to let him go.
TL: Carrie took a job early in the pandemic on this great show at HBO. At the time, we didn’t know what the end of the pandemic would look like. Nobody knew how it was going to play out. So she took this job, meaning we left Chicago and came to New York for her to start in October. I went kicking and screaming. I did not want to go back to New York. I did not want her to go to work. I did not want to reenter the public sphere.
CC: The show was one of the first productions back, so the Covid protocols were brand-new. And look, it’s an industry that implements a lot of new technology and has to change. So it’s a great industry to test out protocols because of the way it works and how we are always able somehow to complete a project on a deadline. But it was really scary to think about being the pioneers in New York. Everybody was just making up these rules about Covid. And my husband is in a slightly more vulnerable population than me, meaning he’s a little older than me and he’s a man. And so he was worried. He was scared.
On Letts: Brioni tuxedo and Allen Edmonds oxfords. On Coon: Giorgio Armani gown; Chopard earrings and bracelet; and Giuseppe Zanotti wedges.
TL: When my wife leaves the house, I used to say “goodbye” or “I love you.” Now I say, “Be safe.” It’s actually become part of the vocabulary.
CC: We’re not a “take turns” couple. The irresistible job is always the one we accommodate. If one of us gets an offer that is like, “This is really special,” we make room for it.
TL: There’s never any debate about what that job is.
CC: We always agree. That’s true. It is very obvious.
TL: I can say to Carrie, “This is it, right?” And she’ll say, “Yeah, this is it.” And we understand this is it. And then we figure it out.
CC: And knowing that my career is probably about to have a precipitous drop-off, what’s nice about being married to Tracy is that he doesn’t care what I look like, how old I am. Right? I’ll always be younger than him, even after Hollywood throws me out. I mean, it’s kind of a joke, but it’s really not a joke to have a secure relationship when you’re navigating Hollywood as a woman. I think it’s very important. I’m 40 now. It’s comforting to be able to talk to Tracy when I’m not feeling confident about the way forward or that I’ll ever work again. I mean, I have those moments like anyone. In any given year, there are probably 10 Hollywood films that I would be the right age and type for and about 30 women in Hollywood at least who might be up for them. Everybody throws their hat in the ring for those films. And you’re going to see the same 10 or 12 people doing those films. So it’s unlikely for me to break into that echelon. But I feel like TV has really pushed the conversation forward. That’s certainly where my career has shown the possibility of having the most longevity.
TL: We’re not having to manage each other’s delusions. We both have a pretty realistic view of who we are in the business, what we can do, the kinds of jobs we could conceivably get, the kind of jobs we don’t have a prayer of getting. I know that for me, acting has become almost solely about managing fear and being able to relax and do my job. And then I think that having a son, having Haskell—it changes your priorities. If you have a fear of being humiliated—and worlds have been created and destroyed because of people’s fears of being humiliated—it doesn’t matter as much when you have a three-year-old to come home to. I can be humiliated on set, but then I come home to my son. He doesn’t care. He loves me unconditionally.
CC: It feels to me that a lot of people during this time have been confronting a lack of presence in their job. As artists, that’s not something we’ve been lacking in our work. But when our work goes away, the invitation to presence is missing, so you have to find other ways in your life to make sure that you’re still showing up and being present. That’s another great thing about children. Children are present. They’re a reminder about the gift of that state. So it’s nice as an artist to be able to recognize that in a child.
To not be able to do that in a room together like we were accustomed to doing— everything was just an extra layer of devastation on top of what was already a systemic issue.
— Carrie Coon —
TL: I don’t think I—or really anybody at this point—understand fully what it is we’ve gone through and are going through. We have lost more than 590,000 people in this country. It is a staggering number. It’s a number nobody can get their head around. And one of the reasons you can’t is because it keeps ticking up; it keeps ticking up into unfathomable numbers. We really have had no reckoning with that, no mourning of that. I don’t know when that comes or how that comes. But I defy anybody to have the kind of perspective of this moment that would allow them to create a universal truth that we can all understand and embrace. I just don’t think it’s possible. I know it’s not possible for me. I’m just going to need some time and space. So in the meanwhile, I took a job on a show about basketball.
CC: And I’m so glad to see him back working again and feeling excited about something.
TL: I knew it was the right gig when my wife was so much more excited about it than I was. I think it’s a great goal to open the theater in the fall, but once people get sick, theaters are going to shut back down by winter. And if people don’t get this fucking vaccine and we don’t start to see those numbers really build, then that’s going to happen.
CC: The audience is a character. Every night is different.
TL: The audience is very much a part of it. I just don’t think anybody realized how much human interaction—how necessary it is. I have not been in a grocery store for 14 months. The first time I had an interaction with a stranger was when I went to check in for a doctor’s appointment, and they’re behind plexiglass. I’m wearing a mask. I’m several feet away. I had to fight back tears. Just that simple interaction with another human being.
Fashion Editor: Miguel Enamorado; Hair: Marco Santini for Davines; Makeup: Rebecca Restrepo for Chanel Beauty.
