Carrie Coon on White Lotus Finale, Marvel Pay and Meghan McCain Feud

SPOILER ALERT: The article contains major spoilers for the Season 3 finale of “White Lotus,” now streaming on Max.

Laurie was ready to go home from her White Lotus adventure on Sunday’s season finale of the HBO drama — and so was Carrie Coon. In fact, the shoot wasn’t an easy one, the actor told Variety on Monday morning.

With two children at home in New York and production on “The Gilded Age” beginning just 48 hours after she left Thailand, filming “The White Lotus” had to be worth it for her, she says. And it was.

From Laurie’s wild friendship that mirrored some of her real-life experiences and her epic run following those finale gunshots, Coon tells all about her “The White Lotus” experiences.

Many of the cast watched the finale together last night — did you watch it live?

Yes, I did. I watched with my husband. My brother and sister-in-law are here from Singapore, and they were supposed to watch, but they passed out, so they’re watching it right now in my basement! And that’s fitting, because it was my husband who had to make all the sacrifices for me to do the show, and he’s my No. 1 fan, and kind of the only opinion I care about when it comes to my work.

Did he like it? He approved?

He really did. He was very enrolled in the storylines. He was interested in the spiritual preoccupation, and he didn’t know anything about the story because I didn’t tell him anything. So he was genuinely surprised by a lot of it!

I know you shot multiple endings. Did you know the deaths or what ending was coming?

No, I didn’t! I just know what I was in, and I’d forgotten. I had intentionally, really, kept a loose grip on the other storylines so I could enjoy the show as a fan. So I kind of forgot what happened. And we all had stuff that was cut, so I knew also some of the material that just didn’t make it in for storytelling reasons, too, that had to do with the ending so it’s always hard to lose those things.

Yes, we heard the original finale was 2 1/2 hours!

Yeah that tracks; we shot a lot. The director’s cut maybe will come out on Blu-ray!

One of the most powerful scenes in the finale is Laurie’s speech at their final dinner. What was that like to perform? How many takes did you do?

What do I remember? I knew when I read the scripts that that was the heart of the season. The other storylines were quite big and transgressive and Greek, and our storyline felt smaller and more disconnected. We wondered if it would work, but we felt that accessibility of it, the relatability of it. There’s a lot of pressure building up to a big end-of-season monologue, which I’ve had that pressure before. It’s not my first rodeo. But you still have to prepare. Shooting in that atrium is like shooting in a greenhouse. It’s the hottest I’ve ever been in my life. We were pouring sweat. So that was the first obstacle. I think we did my side first. I had a pretty emotional way into it, and I did the take, and it was pretty present. Then Mike had a really different idea about the way it was supposed to go — not even a different idea, just a really specific take on that moment and that speech and the tone that he was looking for. I said, “You clearly have something you’re looking for. Let’s not give up on this.” He was like, “I’m sorry. Can we do it again?” I said, “No sorry! We will do it as many times.”

The most important piece is that you are speaking into the listening of your scene partners. Leslie Bibb and Michelle Monaghan and I had been living together in Thailand for six months, and we had had our own experience of friendship in those six months that in some ways, mirrors the ups and downs of just what it means to be a family and what it means to be new old friends, which we became. So, it’s about the way they received it. The only way you can do something like that with any truthfulness is because of the people who are listening to you. The best work happens in between people. So I give them all the credit for just helping me stay focused in that moment.

Something you said — you wondered if it would work — reminded me that Leslie said on a panel last night that at first, she was worried the women’s storyline was boring. Was that a conversation you guys had?

We certainly had that concern. I had to ask the question if it was enough material for me to go away from my family to Thailand for six months. That was a real question. But I felt that it’s very important in any piece of art to have a cipher. There’s always a cipher for the audience. I think Belinda performs that service for the audience in “The White Lotus.” Our scenes were up first, so we shot the first couple of weeks just the ladies. It was a show about three ladies, and then suddenly we were not working all the time. So what I understood was how well Mike understood the women, and how interested he was in the psychology of their friendship. He gave us the longest scenes, though they were cut down mightily in the final edit, as they need to be to balance the story. And he just delighted in their dynamic. And so I knew that he was going to take good care of the ladies in that final cut. I absolutely trusted him implicitly. That’s the reason I went to Thailand, was to work with Mike. Everybody else was a bonus.

So was the final monologue a mashup of your take and Mike’s take?

I don’t know! I don’t remember those things — I have two children. It was so hot! I think it was probably around the third take, because one of the notes was picking up the pace a little bit.

So many people are saying it felt so real to them. Was there a line that really hit home for you?

Absolutely. There was so much about our real lives in it. We were coming to the end of our experience together, and it was very easy to call upon the gratitude of being at that table, questions about one’s choices. You can’t be a woman in any business, but in this industry in particular, without thinking about your choices all the time and knowing that we would be compared to each other no matter what we did, because that’s the world we’re living in. That was a reality. Being able to speak truthfully about Leslie’s life and Michelle’s face, and vice versa, there’s a lot of truth in that piece that Mike wrote.

I’m proud of the work we did, because I so rarely get the opportunity to work with women my own age in a piece. We are so often either pitted against each other, or there’s two of us, and we don’t have scenes together, or whatever it is. And there were many of us, including Parker Posey and Natasha Rothwell, who are the same age, and it’s a real gift to me in this time of my life to get to work with women in that way, especially women who are as successful, as prepared, as hardworking, as Leslie and Michelle.

Do you have a clear understanding — and how much did you and Mike talk about — what’s bringing Laurie down at home? It’s a bit vague on the show.

Well, Michelle’s right — she didn’t make partner, she talks about it. You hear her complaining about the men at work, perhaps, and that she’s paying palimony, so we know that her marriage has fallen apart. We know also that probably some of that work stuff is just the natural punishment you get for motherhood, if you’re not just available 24/7, and we’ve heard about her problematic daughter. Now this has come up in the press. Mike has addressed it — and it was very lightly touched upon — the suggestion that the daughter was maybe nonbinary, and was going through some of that conversation in her life and was struggling maybe with some other issues back home. But it wasn’t elaborated on mightily in the script. It was not enough. It was not enough to investigate that question thoroughly. But I knew it. I knew what Laurie was going through back home.

And I have two kids! I was away from my young children and my husband more or less for six months. I’m not in a lot of the behind-the-scenes photos, because every time I had a break, I had to fly home to New York, so I didn’t get to just hang out and go to Cambodia. And I don’t begrudge anyone that experience. But I didn’t get to have the hang; and as soon as I landed, I was back in doing all of the mom things and all of the wife things. It was not an easy job for me.

And you started “The Gilded Age” immediately.

I started at 48 hours after I landed. So, then I was on that, and working a lot until mid-January. So this was a magnificent year as an actor. I have no reason to complain. As a mother, it was incredibly challenging. So anyway, there’s plenty of circumstances I could Stanislavski into those moments, because there was a lot happening for my family.

For sure! One scene I want to mention is the boat ride home: The women don’t look too freaked out after having witnessed a mass murder?!

I love that, because Mike was very specifically looking for, Jaclyn’s having an emotional [experience]. She’s processing it. And Laurie is there to be practical, and help her. And then he just gave Kate this moment of contemplation. We don’t really know what’s going on there. Leslie’s performance across the season was so nuanced, so specific and funny, I’m glad that she got that final frame. But there was Jaclyn, I think, probably making it about her.

Are you aware that your run away from the shots is already all over the internet? What was the direction there?

There wasn’t direction. I knew the gunshot was going to happen, and we were going to run into the bushes, essentially. Look, I’m an American and I’m a New Yorker, and if you think I don’t know where the exits are in any building I’m in, then you’re not paying attention to the news. I thought, what would a person do? A person would fucking run, would book it, and I’m fast. I’m not as fast as I used to be! Some polite Thai workers were kind of scampering through in the background. I was like, “No, no, you need to have some Americans sprinting and hitting the deck, and jumping in the lagoon. The Americans are not playing. They know what this means!”

100%. So you’ve been very vocal politically and this was written before Trump was re-elected. I know you commented a bit on Laurie’s child, but do you think Laurie would have acted any differently had been written after? 

There were some spiking moments in those conversations that I think embody what that response might have been, even though Mike wrote this before the election. They would have been relevant responses. But it wasn’t a lot. I don’t want to make more of it than it was. It wasn’t a long conversation, but it was certainly specific to those circumstances that Laurie’s going through. I don’t know how different it would be. We’ve all had these moments of discovery with people either way. Anybody who’s living here, it’s like it’s the Civil War. There’s a lot of division in families. There’s division in my family — not my immediate family. Everyone’s kind of coming around. But there are people you love, and you have to try delicately sometimes through those moments, or you explode and then you have to backpedal and try to find common ground. Laurie’s a drunk New Yorker so you never know what you’re going to get!

Speaking of politics, Meghan McCain recently started talking about you on social media and, as one headline put it, slut-shamed your character! Did that surprise you, how invested she seems to be?

I hope Meghan enjoyed the finale. I’m glad she’s watching the show.

Lastly, I have to ask about your husband Tracy Letts’ comments regarding you turning down ‘Avengers: Endgame’ due to pay — and his AMAZING quote saying but then you guys would have had to watch the movies, which was out of the question. He said Marvel said you should feel fortunate to be part of the MCU. Hearing that seems so harsh — and something a man would never be told. How did you react to that?

I’ll say, I’m sure men are told that. I think what it’s more about is what’s driving our industry — like you should be lucky to be part of this engine that is making money in our industry. Here’s the metaphor: Let’s say you’re starting off in a business and get an entry-level position and are given an entry-level salary. You work in that business for 10 years, you’re no longer making an entry-level salary, and then an amazing company comes to you and says, “We think you’re great, and we would like to hire you.” And you say, “Fantastic. I this is an amazing company. I’d love to work for you.” But they’re only going to pay you your entry-level salary. You decide it’s a great company, I’ll give it a shot. And then you work for them and they extend your contract. You say, “Wonderful. Can I expect to receive a salary commensurate with my experience?” And the company says, “No, I’m sorry. We can only pay your entry-level salary.”

The lesson there is that my time is more valuable elsewhere. And so I part ways with this company, everybody amicably, because my time, especially as a person with a family, is more valuable than that. So it’s purely a business decision. I think that those comments are probably less sexist than they are just an indicator of where the movie industry was heading. IP was driving the industry at that time. Maybe we’re having a shift. Maybe we’re having a swing back. I think people, operate under a tremendous misunderstanding about what we’re paid in those circumstances. I think if people knew, I think they’d be surprised, and wouldn’t be surprised at the decision I made.

This interview has been edited and condensed.