Carrie Coon had a house full of family the morning she learned she had been nominated for an Emmy for her work on HBO’s “The Gilded Age.”
After a 16-hour day on the set of the period drama’s third season, Coon’s mother, father, brother, sister-in-law and a few children arrived overnight from Ohio for a visit. Including her own children, the only family member not home the morning of the Emmy nominations was her husband, fellow actor Tracy Letts, who received his surprise first nomination for a guest role in HBO’s ‘Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty’.
On that rather busy morning, it was her agent Jacob Fenton who called to congratulate Coon on her nod for her role as Bertha Russell, the ambitious social climber and wife of the railroad baron, who takes 1880s New York City by storm. Then a flood of texts came in about Letts, and that’s when she realized double congratulations were in order.
Letts, meanwhile, had gone into town for an early photo shoot and watched his wife’s nomination being announced in the makeup trailer before putting his phone away. It wasn’t until he got a video of Coon and their son tearfully sending their congratulations that “I found out I was nominated,” Letts says. Variety.
Coon’s mother immediately wondered if the double award was a rarity. “She asked if we had made history,” says Coon, laughing. “She wanted to know if it was big news to have a couple nominated, but of course it wasn’t. I looked it up. Three of us have been nominated.”
Coon is right. Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor, as well as Naomi Watts and Billy Crudup are also couples who will hear their names read out on Emmys night. But Coon and Letts stand out from the pack as frequent collaborators on stage and screen. She appeared in three of his plays, and they both appeared in Steven Spielberg’s American ‘The Sinner’ and ‘The Post’, although they shared no scenes in either. More recently, Letts filmed a cameo opposite her in “Ghostbusters: Afterlife.”
For the Emmys, however, they couldn’t be on more opposite ends of the spectrum or timeline. “The Gilded Age” is set in the 1880s, while “Winning Time” is a testament to how the LA Lakers changed the game of basketball a hundred years later. The only thing bridging the two shows is their home with HBO and director Salli Richardson-Whitfield, who worked on both shows and is Emmy nominated for “Winning Time.”
“She’s our Kevin Bacon,” Coon jokes.
Coon’s nomination comes as “The Gilded Age” begins production on a new season that even its stars didn’t see coming. “We were shocked because I was pretty sure we were done,” Coon said. “The strike hurt everyone, and our option was not picked up. So apparently the show was over for us. We were looking for other work, and the internet and buzz got us picked up.”
Letts interjects with a humble brag: “I wasn’t shocked. I called this from far away.”
“He’s a gambler in our house,” Coon says. “He’s always right when it comes to these things.”
In the show’s second season, Bertha claims social victory when the city’s elite gives her a standing ovation on the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera House she helped shepherd. Morally, though, she has room to grow, having secretly secured that victory by promising her daughter Gladys (Taissa Farmiga) to a duke.
“Bertha does not feel morally compromised at all,” says Coon. “She feels great because she believes she is doing the right thing. I think the source of her myopia, her blindness about her daughter, is her own ambition. She has been thwarted in the world and she wants to get her daughter to reach a level that was unattainable for her. So she’s completely happy with the way she set things up in Season 3 with the Duke. The opera was just a microcosm of a bigger picture, and Bertha is ready to smash through her own glass ceiling.”
Warrick Page/HBO
As the story of “The Gilded Age” continues, “Winning Time’s” came to an abrupt end when HBO confirmed the series had been canceled the night the Season 2 finale aired. Letts played Jack McKinney, the LA Lakers head coach who implemented the high-energy playing style known as Showtime. His time with the Lakers ended in Season 1, but Letts returned for a single episode in Season 2 to test the shaky leadership of his successors, Pat Riley (Adrien Brody) and Paul Westhead (Jason Segel).
“I thought one of the great things that ‘Winning Time’ did was shine a light on hidden history,” Letts says. “I’m old enough to remember the Showtime Lakers very well, but I didn’t remember Jack
McKinney not at all. So to shed some light on this man, who certainly seems to be an early architect of the basketball we’re watching today, I love that element of the show. And it was fun to get back into my wig and 70s duds.
Coon praises her husband’s indelible work in a role that clearly resonated with audiences, despite Season 2 having only two scenes. Letts will go down as the only acting Emmy nominee among the series’ ultra-star cast.
“Tracy plays a great coach, but he always says, ‘As long as no one throws me a basketball,’” Coon said. He adds: “I have made it clear that no one is allowed to throw me a basketball or I will be immediately exposed.”
For those hoping Letts trades the basketball court for upper-level ballrooms with Coon in ‘The Gilded Age’, he has no interest in ‘muddling her domain’ – even though she has asked him a few times . But he loves watching the show and, more importantly, singing the orchestral theme song, which has no lyrics.
“Let’s just say he has a very specific way of singing that you really have to hear,” says Coon with a big, knowing smile.