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Visit blueapron.com/slash terms for more. I'm Jane Pauley. You're listening to an extended interview from the latest edition of Sunday Morning. What is the theme that you are that you are trying to present to the audience. I believe fundamentally the play is asking How people make meaning.
and find purpose. inside of systems. that are fundamentally operating fundamentally counter to that.
So oppressive systems. I think um There's a feeling of futility in the world. And I think these people in this play who are working class people. Are striving to find answers and striving to find a sense of purpose. And isn't that The human condition to find purpose.
And yes, there's also the loss of a child, and there are a lot of, you know, psychological, there's a lot of psychological damage. There's addiction, there's mental illness. And I think that is stuff we're all really, it's in our faces right now, especially post-pandemic. I thought, so the paranoia conspiracy stuff, it's right in front of you, you can't not see it. But what I was The knot I was untangling when I left the theater.
The play felt like it was as much about the corrosive power of loneliness as much as anything else. I think that's real. I think these are two lonely people who find connection and solace, maybe at great cost. but feels worthwhile to them. And ultimately they are free.
I want to talk about something that Tracy said yesterday when we were discussing you. He said You are absolutely fearless. Where does that come from? Perhaps there's something in my amygdala that's missing. I don't know, it's funny.
I don't feel fearless necessarily, but maybe. I understand that There's nothing fruitful about fearfulness. That um there's nothing to be gained from being afraid. In this production, when do you rely? on your fearlessness the most.
Yeah. That's a good question.
Well, this production This play is physically very demanding, and you really have to just throw your body into it without much concern. for what that will mean. And at 44, that's a lot harder to do than it was even four years ago. And also, I think there's also in the process of figuring out the story of the play is just a willingness to be bad. I mean, that's something I always try to communicate to young actors, even when they're working in TV and film, is you have to be willing to do a big bad take to figure out where the thing lives.
You have to be willing to go terribly wrong to then find the track that is most effective in the storytelling.
So maybe that's where it is. Also, maybe there's the question of, you know, when you have kids, I used to judge people who couldn't consume art wherein children were hurt. I thought there was something sort of, you know, prudish about it or something.
Now that I have kids, the contemplation of something happening to them is. Territory that's Very hard to touch. And so the idea of losing a child, especially in the play, you know, her child is six, I have a seven-year-old and a four-year-old. And so, to sit in contemplation of what that really means. Feels damaging.
And that requires, what, a fearlessness on your ability to go there? I think so. But I also think that's the work. I mean, that's what actors are suppo have always done. You go into that fire and you come out on the other side.
And I don't feel. unhealthy for it. People say, well, how do you come down? How do you leave it? But it's really cathartic to go through it in order every night.
Telling a story in order. Is very cathartic, and I feel like once the play is over, you are, and you've done a rigorous play like this, you feel like you've done something, and you could just sort of. Leave it there. He didn't just say you were fearless. Yeah.
It was actually a more elaborate quote. Yeah. What Tracy said was She's fearless. She has ice in her veins. And then he said, you know, shh.
She could be an, and I thought, surgeon? And he said, an assassin. I haven't heard that one from him before. I was like some ex-boyfriends might agree that I have ice water in my veins, but an assassin, interesting. What is he getting at?
I don't know. Who did he marry? Uh... Tremendous liar. I know what my first question is going to be when we sit down, the three of us.
I wonder what he does mean by that. You know, I did almost try to get into the FBI. My grandfather was really hot on that. He had me meet with an old white-collar investigator when I was in college because he really wanted me to go on that track. What was compelling you towards a career as an FBI agent?
Well, you know, I almost was being recruited by the Naval Academy to run, to do track and field. We had quite a good track team, but I knew I didn't want to be an athlete at that level in college. I wanted to focus on academics. But I went through the process and almost, you know, almost tried to pursue the Naval Academy. And looking back on that now, I wonder who that person was.
But I don't know, I guess I do respond to. Discipline, maybe? And I feel that As an artist, it actually can be quite rigorous as a discipline, what you have to do to be prepared. undertake a You know, a play or I mean, we are a kind, it is athletic. I find it athletic.
So maybe that's it, the rigor of that. Training. There's a training. Discipline. Yeah, yeah.
But is there something in me? I would love to figure out a mystery? I mean, if you think about it, I guess an FBI agent is also figuring out a story. What happened here? I feel like I'm really leaning into the hagiography of my own, you know, like unfulfilled biography.
It feels a little bit shameful as a Midwesterner, but But yeah, I mean, What's wonderful about being asked to do this job is that It is like solving a mystery, and it's different every time. And I find that my process is different for every project, and that's just. That's just the purview of a curious person. It invites me to be a curious person. I think I am that and I think the people I'm most interested in spending time with and being friends with, the older I get, are like fundamentally curious people.
So I you mentioned that You mentioned that six Yeah. Welcome to New York. Um you mentioned six years ago you guys were first putting bug On, I think of the step in. Oh, gosh, was it six? My goodness.
Pandemic, I think I think we're almost, I was counting. The years.
So In the interval. Since This play got interrupted due to the pandemic. and now putting it on Broadway. Your life. Ha ha ha ha.
Wow. Yeah, that's changed a bit. Mostly on the internet. I'm gonna ask you about that. But before we do that, how would you describe the last.
Half a decade of your life. I don't think Whirlwind begins to cover that. I mean, it's funny, it maybe looks like a whirlwind from the outside, and for me, it has always felt like a slow and steady march. Because things have naturally or organically led from one thing to another. blessedly without any big gaps.
You know, it's an unusual Trajectory in that it hasn't felt rocky, it has felt just sort of like we're just working our way up to this from the inside. That's how it feels. Um And though Shocking to my family, I think. My life doesn't feel different.
So I'm taking care of my kids. I'm married. Healthy marriage. I don't get out much because of the ages my kids are. I really don't.
I was being recognized while White Lotus was on TV, or if I'm on an airplane going to Los Angeles with other people going to Los Angeles. But as I walk down the streets of New York, I'm not being recognized. I'm not. It hasn't changed.
So when someone says Carry Coon, you're having a moment. Right. It doesn't feel like that to you because, yeah, 20 years or 25 years in the making. Right. I graduated in 2006.
So, you know, I've now been doing this for a long time. And I'm still learning. I'm still hopefully getting better. Um I'm still coming up against those things maybe I'm not as good at. I'm still fighting against the way people want to cast me.
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Now playing in select theaters everywhere January 16th. Would you agree with me that Where you used to say you're at the bottom of the A list? I think I used to say maybe bottom of the B list, but yeah, I couldn't. But don't we need to revise our assessment as where you are? Maybe, but the business hasn't changed.
You know, the economics haven't changed. The thing that's changed for me is that I was on the white lotus and now I can be in a Broadway play. That wasn't true for me five years ago. The economics of theater have changed because we live in a country that is fundamentally unsupportive of the arts. You know, governmentally, there's no federal support for the arts.
So now, in order to do a play on Broadway, you have to do the white lotus. or else you're not allowed. They have to replace you with somebody more famous. Hang on. If you hadn't done White Lotus and Gilded Age and hadn't sort of blown up as a single square.
Absolutely not. Your acting ability, what you do on stage. Not enough? No, that's not how we make those decisions anymore. And you can ask all these extraordinary theater actors who don't do plays anymore because celebrities are doing plays.
It's just a different world that we're living in now.
So you're only... I would say August Osage County, that production, would not come to Broadway now. Nobody would take a risk. Economically, on that move with a bunch of Chicago actors, a bunch of unknown actors in a company. I don't think the play would move now.
I don't think anybody would. Pony up to do it. And Tracy wouldn't have a Pulitzer? That's right. And I wouldn't have married him.
Yeah. I'm just kidding. That's probably not true. Yeah, ish. It's a really sad thing.
It is a sad thing. The state of affairs for the arts in this country is a very sad thing. Everyone's fighting for the same dollars. And I would argue The country goes the way of the arts.
So, as we see that decline, I think it's symbolic of a greater erosion in our. Uh humanity. It's like, beware. Yes, yes, I do. I think it's a bellwether.
I think it's a canary in the coal mine. I think we would do well to reorient ourselves to our storytelling. Because we are keeping the history. And I think we're in a precarious place. I want to follow up on this, but before I do, because it feels like.
The other sort of dimension to the change in your life. Is As an actor, just doing stage work. There's a major shift in something you have to contend with as a star. In other words, Now you get into a dust up on social media with a politician or an offhanded line about your marriage. Yeah.
Yeah, my parents loved that one. I'm sure they did. But now that now that you are in this other place in terms of the culture, Do you ever have to say to yourself, This is really silly that I'm worried about people speculating on whether I have an open marriage or not. Or I need to be mindful. The lights are much brighter now.
I think it is wise to be aware that people are listening to you. I don't think I believed that before, and now I understand people are listening.
So, if Tracy and I are in a restaurant having a conversation, and someone's sitting next to us for two hours, and we're You know, gossiping. That person that at the end of the meal goes, love your work. You're like, oh no. What did we say?
So, yes, we do have to be conscious of that. At the same time, the reason I am where I am, I think, has to do with. a level of authenticity. I am really... We're all to some degree performing self.
I'm not patting myself on the back for anything, but I've gotten a lot of. street cred out of being from the Midwest and being who I am. And I haven't shied away entirely from political conversations, for example. And here's the other thing I know: I don't have an over-inflated idea of my own importance in that landscape. A story like that is gone in a day.
So, while we do have to be on some level more careful, it also matters less because of how quickly these stories move. It doesn't really matter and like who's actually paying attention to them is You know, it's like, does it really matter in the grand scheme of things when, you know, the world is ending and children are starving to death all over the world and arguably like the most lucrative and rich time of you know, human history, like let's have a sense of where we fit inside of that story. Like not that important. How, I mean. I should I already, as I said, I already thought you had a moving dialogue and a monologue and the white lotus thing.
First of all. Is that what you hear most when somebody bumps into you on the street? Are you still hearing more about the monologue at the end of White Lotus about friendship than anything else? I hear that more on the internet. People that bump into me on the street, the only people who ever recognize me in the wild are leftovers fans.
So what I hear. Is about the leftovers. That they're re-watching it, they're making their fiancé watch it for the first time, they remember that monologue as like sort of the apex of my career, you know, or they have a story of their own grief. I rarely get recognized for anything else. Why did the monologue about Friendship among women.
connect the way it did. Yeah. I think that's a great question, probably for greater minds than me, but I was astonished by the number of pieces that were written about that question. I think it has to do with where we are, to circle back to what you were talking about earlier, there is a fundamental loneliness. When I look around the subway car and everyone's looking at their phones, maybe one person's reading a book.
A couple people are sleeping, but most people are buried in their phones. What are we looking for? You know, and what are we getting?
Well, primarily we're getting this performance of self, and we all feel like we're missing out on something, and that everybody else is doing something right, and we're doing something wrong. It was ever thus, but this is really putting it in our faces every day. And as a result, our intimacy, our relationships are suffering. We're not connecting in person. And so I think people do feel lonely.
And they're assessing their life choices. And I think they are. Yeah. We have to be willing to drop the facade to have real intimacy. We have to be willing to to ask the question, how are you?
but also answer it. Not in a way that's like, oh, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to bring down the, I don't want to harsh the buzz, I don't want to bring anybody down. We have to be willing to be really honest about how we're really feeling. And I think that vulnerability is scary. for people.
And you know, Lori is embracing that vulnerability. She's finally. And had they started their vacation in that place, it would have been a really different vacation. If on day one they'd been willing to be like, you know, actually, Life's not going the way I expected, and I'd really like to talk about it. But that's not what those women do.
And so the lesson is like, What could we open into if we're willing to be vulnerable to each other? Honestly, authentically vulnerable? It's such a. Irony, it's the ironic context of contemporary life that we are more connected than ever and also less connected. Absolutely.
Yeah, absolutely. And it also gets harder to make friends as you get older. I mean, I'm a person with young children. Tracy and I haven't had time to cultivate new friendships in our new town. We've lived upstate now for three years, and I feel like we've barely, like, you know, we've barely been able to lean into that possibility up there to build community.
We haven't had time. It's really hard to do when you get older. One last question. Um This is really what I have been thinking most about as I try to consider. This last five years of your life.
So Tracy said You two, at the end of the day, are stage animals, that the theater is Is it a fair assessment? You know, there in ways there are these, you say you don't feel it internally, but externally it would seem there's you're in a category five hurricane to some extent as. As as your career reflects this sort of star turns in the Gilded Age and White Lotus. At the end of the day, is the stage where you go To anchor yourself? Yes, if you've if you started there.
It is always a return to form. And what it reminds, not only is it about exercising different muscles. Um You are telling a body, you're telling a story in space with your whole body. Your whole body signifies in space. And so there's a real economy that comes from that because you are, your job is storytelling, it's not.
A close-up. And so there's that reminding you that in that moment, you are the arbiter of taste. It is your responsibility to make sure the story is getting told. You are the one who can feel whether the story is being told. In TV and film, it's somebody else saying, we got that.
It's the director, it's the editor, it's the showrunner. You are just throwing things at the wall, and they decide what sticks, and they're using what they. what they think is most useful for the tone. And so your responsibility is different. And you have a responsibility to people who are just sitting right there feet from you, which you certainly don't have in film and TV.
No, no, it's true. But you know, it demands so much of your instrument. And I find that work because it's so vigorous. Then I think you do have more maybe possibility when you get to TV and film. And it gets you back in your body.
It helps you feel what your bad habits are. You can rely on those habits and get away with a lot in TV and film, and you can't get away with that same stuff on stage. And so I think it's a good reset of, you know, where do I still need to loosen up? Or what do I not have access to in myself? That's why I think it's important to watch yourself.
So this is. The mirror. We all need a mirror and stage work for you professionally. Is your mirror. Also, you get to tell a story in order.
We don't do that in TV and film. It's really satisfying to. Do the climax of a story after you've laid the groundwork to build up to it, and also get to live through the catharsis in real time? If we got to do that in TV and film, it would all be so much better because you learn so much from those building blocks. And so that return is also.
Just always very satisfying. I'm Jane Pauley. Thank you for listening. And for more of our extended interviews, follow and listen to Sunday morning on the free Odyssey app. or wherever you get your podcasts.
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