Happy Sad Confused - Carrie Coon

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

This is the podcast conversation that tried not to happen but damnit, we made sure it did. After losing their first chat to the ravages of technological snafus, Josh and Carrie chat about her quick ascent in TV and film, after a Tony nominated performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?". They chat about Carrie's film debut in David Fincher's "Gone Girl", why "The Leftovers" was so special, her new film, "The Nest", AND her upcoming role in the new "Ghostbusters" film! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

D.C. high volume, Batman. The Dark Nights definitive DC comic stories adapted directly for audio for the very first time. Fear, I have to make them afraid. He's got a motorcycle. Get after him or have you shot. What do you mean blow up the building? From this moment on,

none of you are safe. New episodes every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, sad, confused begins now. Today on Happy, Sad, Confused, Carrie Coon, from Gone Girl and The Leftovers to her new film, The Nest. Hey, guys, I'm Josh Horowitz. Welcome to another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused, the great Carrie Coon, our main guest,

our only guest on the podcast today. someone I wanted to have on the podcast for quite a while. Carrie Coon, if you love actors, if you love film and TV, the last few years has been an embarrassment of riches because she has been stellar in production after production. She is one of those that is amazing on the stage. She was Tony nominated for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, among other things. She has been amazing on television, Fargo, the leftovers, of course, and in film. Her film debut was, in fact, talk about.

out an intimidating way to start a film career. Her film debut was in David Fincher's Gone Girl, where she played Ben Affleck's twin sister, more than held her own in that one, and she has been delivering great performance after great performance, and her latest continues that tradition. It is a leading role, thankful to say it is a leading role in a film. She has not had enough opportunities to lead a film, but she is up there opposite Jude Law in the new film, The Nest. This is a film that debuted way back when, in January at Sundance, got a release, and is now available on Amazon Prime on demand. You can order it on all the various platforms to watch right now, and it is definitely well

worth your time. This is a film from Sean Durkin, the director of Martha Marcy May Marlene. Took him a while. It's hard sometimes to mount that next film, but thankfully he is back with a new film, and this one is definitely worthy of his efforts. It is a dark kind of a study of a relationship. Jude Law and Carrie play a married couple who perhaps way back when things were going swimmingly. Things are not what they once were.

They move. And it has this interesting dark tone that almost feels like you're watching a horror film at first. It is not that, but it is dark and entertaining and rich material for actors. And Carrie and Jude get really the most. out of these characters, and it's no surprise that both of them are earning a lot of praise and both are potentially in the hunt for awards consideration. I would be thrilled to see Carrie Coon get some love from the various critics' bodies, etc. So keep your eyes on Carrie Coon in the awards races coming up the next few months

and check out The Nest if you have the opportunity. Carrie is delightful. She's somebody who I've never really had to be. a chance to have a long conversation with, and thanks to unique circumstances, I had two conversations with her this past week. So here's the story. I said this on Twitter. You might have noticed this. I had a great chat with Carrie for the podcast. Everything went well. We got along famously. We definitely, she's, she's kind of dark and self-deprecating. And that's, you know, my speed, definitely. And we joked a lot in the conversation, recorded on Zoom, as I always do these things because she had really, really crappy Wi-Fi. We were joking about Spectrum,

her service, and fuck Spectrum because it just kept jamming up every two minutes, and it was just, it was going to be kind of a bear in the edit. Well, no such worries, because no recording. Didn't happen. Spectrum fucked us over completely. So that conversation is lost forever, except to carry in my memories. Thankfully, because Carrie Coon is a delight and a good sport, she wanted to get on the phone on the Zoom rather again and we had another conversation so this is take two of our podcast and i think we found ways to have a similar conversation hitting the same beats of her career but in a different way so hopefully that comes across and look by now in this conversation we're old friends you get the benefit of comfort level that maybe wasn't there in the first couple minutes of the first conversation um i should mention we talk and it's in brief partially because we had talked at length about it and the first one, and I didn't want to rehash it totally. But her comfort movie, we do mention briefly in this conversation. I do want to shout it out because it's a great one, and it was a great pick. She chose Cinema Paradiso, which is the 1988 Italian film from Giuseppe Tonatore,

one of the first foreign language films. I saw one of the first foreign language films that she saw, a gorgeous kind of coming-of-age story and a love letter to cinema, and a beautiful film. Well, we're checking out again, and as I say in the podcast, has one of the great all scores from Enio Morricone. So check that one out. That's on HBO Max, by the way. Yeah, so that's the main event today, Carrie Coon. And by the way, if you don't love Carrie Coon enough, she's part of like one of the cool power couples in Hollywood theater. Her husband is Tracy Letts, and I can't think of a cooler duo than those two. And they are both so smart and interesting. So always rooting for them and happy that I had Carrie on the podcast this week.

other things to mention. I do want to mention new episodes of Stir Crazy continuing. Since this goes out on Monday, this is a little sneak preview. The next episode going out in about a day or so will be with the great Aubrey Plaza. Former guest on Happy Set Confused and Always Bizarre and Crazy in the best possible way. She gives me a tarot card reading that will never be forgotten by me. And perhaps you, if you watch this episode, I highly recommend it. Aubrey is currently in happiest season on Hulu.

and Black Bear, by the way, Black Bear, which is the smaller film that maybe isn't getting as much attention, Black Bear is great. It's her and Saragata and Christopher Abbott saw that one at Sundance. Well, worth checking out. And the only other thing I want to mention, as I said, this is kind of an early release that usually doesn't come out on Mondays. Happy, Say I Confused, but I'm releasing this one a little bit early, A, because we just want to get it out there and get Carrie all the love that she deserves, but also because we're going to have another episode in a few days with a very, very, very special guest, a filmmaker. That's all I'm going to say.

I'm not going to tease anymore. You can kind of figure it out on your own if you want, try and figure it out. But, yeah, it's a good one. So stay tuned for the next episode of Happy Say I Confused, but that's later on. For now, enjoy this conversation with one of the great actors out there today. The lovely and delightful. Carrie Coon.

This is Take Two with Carrie Coon. Are you recording, Carrie? Yes. We're recording on 17 different devices today. Yes, we have. Because Carrie and I have, we have a pass that goes back about three days because we had a podcast that sadly will never be heard. I'd like to tell you that I was extremely intelligent and articulate in that.

so it was your finest work all bets are off for this we we cured each other's ills we cured cancer we solved all the world's problems and sorry guys it's just lost and i i can't remember the solutions well we're going to try to remember a few of them um it i will say it was for a podcast or for someone that does what i do it was it's like the most sinking feeling ever like go back let me check out the recording and be like it felt so bad for you no no i don't want to dwell on it but I guess my question, as we segue into an actual conversation, is, is there an analogous thing for an actor? Have you, like, lost a day's worth of footage, a week's worth of whatever? Is there anything comparable to what I experienced? It rarely happens. I've had just the typical boring

frustrations with doing self-tapes because everything is a tape now. And if you're not under 30, that shit is hard. And so uploading, we were uploading videos on a dongle in South Africa. It took two days to upload a video. I mean, it's just horrible stuff. Tracy was just remembering that he had his final scene to do for homeland in South Africa with Claire. And it was this kind of emotional, it was big scene, huge scene. And they came up to him and it was over and said, we lost the, we lost the card.

We lost SD card. And he was like, what? And he and Claire both thought they were messing with them. But in fact, they had to then go back and redo the whole thing and all the coverage. So, but that hasn't happened to me. Thank God. It is interesting that, yeah. I mean, like when I started doing the podcast in this format,

that in these crazy times, like, yeah, I'm like you, like anybody over 25, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I don't get any of this. It took me like three months to get every kind of ring light, every kind of apparatus. I mean, did you guys, were you, did you have to do like recording VO or whatever in your home in Chicago over the last eight months? Like, have you had to kind of like trick out your homes? Yeah, I have a ring light. Here, let me turn it on. How do it look? Amazing. Let me turn it up a little bit. There. I got all the stuff. I got all the stuff. I got all stuff because I was doing press for the nest. My husband said no to every video request he got, which I really admire. I even did a, you know, commencement speech for my college and my graduate

school. Terrible, by the way, but I did them. What did you say? Wait, I want to dwell on this for a second. What was your advice? You know what I said my, well, one of the things I always tell people, young people, is, you know, if you look to the left of you and you look to the right of you, if you were graduating, the person sitting next to you isn't thinking about you. So why are you worried about what they're thinking? And if you really wrap your head around that fact, that if you think about what you're thinking about, it's not other people, then you have nothing to be afraid of. And I remember a moment or that, I mean, I don't remember the moment specifically, but it really clicked for me right around 30. And boy, it is so liberating.

So stop worrying about disappointing other people. Yeah. It's a waste of your time. I'm going to listen to that advice because I have not absorbed it myself quite. Bye, everyone. We're done here. We're done. We did it.

So you are in the midst of shooting. We're going to, let's start where we ended last time. I mentioned that you were shooting the new, the Gilded Age, this new, it's HBO, right? It is. Julian Fellows. So it's basically Downton Abbey with more full frontal nudity and cursing. In fact, no. And that's too bad.

That's what you signed up for. You know, that kind of nudity would be really sexy with all those garments, but no, they're not doing any of that. I think they don't want to turn off their established audience. And it may not be to Julian's taste, or maybe it's not relevant to. the story, but you would think that that would be HBO's game, but I haven't seen, I haven't seen any boobs yet. Not yet. The, the, well, the day is young. Does the, does, uh, does it free you up in any ways, though, artistically? Or, I mean, doesn't, doesn't sound like this is pushing the envelope

in that way, but does the, the HBO way of doing things let? Well, they certainly get out of our way. They're not, they're not a meddling company, which is nice. And they are, the budget is extraordinary, biggest budget I've ever worked on on TV. So the sets and the costumes are astonishing, just astonishing. So that is very, that sparks the imagination. It's not like we're acting in front of a green screen. I have an enormous dining room that I eat in with my family. You know, it's shocking what they're making. And the costume designer is really just, it's breathtaking what she's making. She's really pushed the period a little bit so that we're actually a little bit for the more progressive characters

we're a little bit outside of the time period in a way that's actually super edgy for, it'll make some historians really angry. But it's really fun. And it actually creates the wanted effect, which is that a character walks into a room and really stands out. Yep.

Which is what you need to do. It's TV, you know, it's not real life. We've all seen those costumes done hundreds of times. You have to do something different. And so I really respect that Julian has embraced it. And, no, it's really fun. I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about that, actually. We'll cut whatever you deem too salacious.

I'll check with that. Okay, fair enough, fair enough. But are you, do you find that, is there work carry and non-work carry? Like, are you different when you're in the middle of a job? Are you the kind of actor that can compartmentalize or like, or what? I'm a woman. That's all we do. I mean, I've spent my 30s integrating myself, which I think a lot of women.

And more men should do, women have to do. they want to have any hope of living a, you know, sort of fully engaged life. But anyway, I think I, in my old age, I've gotten so, I'm pretty even keel these days. I do not suffer from the kind of volatility that I live through in my 20s. And so I would say, yes, I'm actually, I am the same person. I think I'm quite, I try to stay energetic and I try not to complain and I try to be present at work and have fun. And I try to be present at work and have fun. And I try to keep it pretty relaxed. I'm not a very high-strung actor. When people see my work, they expect this lugubrious dark person. And so they're always a little surprised. I find

directors are surprised if they know my work that I'm actually quite easygoing. And so that's the kind of, that's how I like to be on set. But that's not very different from how I am at home. I have to engage more socially. And I'm a person who that feels like there's a cost. There's a cost to doing that. So it's exhausting in a different way than just being at home with my family. But, but I don't mind it. It's stimulating. And I think it makes me. me a, you know, a more well-rounded mom. Are most of your friends, actors, writers, artists? Now, yes, I would say the majority of the people I know are, just who I've met. Yeah. And, you know, but the real unifying characteristic is that they're all just really

genuinely curious people. I don't really have time for the incurious. Are you friends with my spirit animal, Michael Shannon, fellowship? Very, yes. I, I, I, my, My husband's known Michael since he was 16. Right. I figured they go way back. Yeah, they do. And so we keep up with them certainly and their family. They're, you know, Michael's so busy and so we don't get to see him very often.

But certainly Tracy and Michael are very close and know each other quite well, yes. Yeah, I'm contractually obligated to mention him on every episode of the podcast. That's fair. Because he's the most mesmerizing actor and human being maybe on the planet. Do you know the old Chicago joke about Mike Shannon? Wait, I don't know if I do. Tell me. All right.

What would you rather have? $500 or Mike Shannon's head full of nickels. Take the nickels. That's amazing. It's a really big head. It's one of a kind. It is one of a kind. If I text him, that to him, will that end my relationship with him?

I don't think so. He'd be like, yeah, it's really big. I'm going to test it, and I'm going to credit you as the one that resurfaced that. That you're texting him at all, I find, you know, you're already, you're already friends. It took me many years, but we got there. We talked a bit about, obviously, the big break of your career last time, but I do want to kind of talk a little bit more about Virginia Woolf, which was this huge life-changing experience for you. It ran for, what, nearly two years of your professional life? Yeah, off and on for about two years, yeah.

So does everything, you were saying before, that still remains probably the most, just what physically, emotionally wearing role of your career? Was it just? I think bug rivals it. It was more that because it was a. the highest pressure situation I'd been in in some ways, though it was still just doing the work. I didn't really feel, you know, that sort of pressure outside of the work I had to do on stage. But it was, but it's not, I found bug harder. I just finished doing bug at Steppenwolf during the pandemic. And that was a harder role by far. But what was happening in my life was,

no, I was just going to say that my life at that time was in such transition that, that's what was hard about it. Was, so you obviously met Tracy and began a life with Tracy on that production. Did you think that people watching the show saw something in performances? No? I don't think so. I think they, hopefully what they saw was a really cohesive ensemble. I think our sense of ensemble was really strong. And Amy and Tracy have played married couples eight times or something over the last couple of decades. I mean, they've played married couples. So they had a history. And I think what was nice is that you felt that history. though I think our friends who saw us together weren't surprised at all.

And ultimately, nor was my family. I mean, they were a little skeptical at first of a showmance with an older man, but they got over it. They were like, oh, actually, you know what they said, which was the greatest compliment. My parents said, oh, you're still you. You know, they had seen me be a bit of a shape shifter in my other relationships. And for the first time, they saw me not change when he was around. And I think that was a really huge indicator of how healthy the relationship was. Absolutely. I have this kind of recurring conversation with many actors who've gone back and forth between theater and film and TV. And I get all sorts of different answers about sort of like whether you modulate a performance for the stage or the screen, et cetera. Like Sam Jackson practically like laughed at me. He's like, no, it's the same. I don't do anything different. I don't think that's not your take. It sounds like.

No, I mean, I mean, look, filling an 1100-seat house in Wisconsin doing Shakespeare is different. than doing, you know, having a close-up on the leftovers. It's different. Right. But I think ultimately the goal is the same, which is no matter what the size, is it truthful? Because I also admire, I admire really big performances on film. I like a big, bold performance on film that feels truthful. I think that art can withstand that. And even, you know, something like the Gilded Age, which is, there's so much, there's, it's so extravagant around us that it can withstand. stand a little bit of camp, you know, you can push it a little bit as long. It's elevated. It's stylized it away. So it's fun to traffic in that and try to find what the line is

between that subtlety that you learn to do on camera and then, you know, something theatrical about it. But I do think every job is different. Right. It's interesting. I mean, I think for as long as you're going to be doing this, you're always going to be talking about this amazing kind of period in your life, this transition from Virginia Woolf to Gone Girl and the leftovers. because it all, it happened in a relatively short period of time in a fascinating way. You book the pilot for leftovers, then you meet Fincher. As far as I know, so you had never been to L.A. even? I'd never been to L.A. I didn't have an iPhone. I had to rent a Tom Tom.

And also my experience of L.A. was that there was no traffic. Did you go to the right now? Well, they had me crisscrossing the city to meet all these casting directors. And I had no idea that it was unusual to just drive from one end of L.A. to the other three times in a day. And I thought, oh, this is, this is very reasonable. Why is everybody complaining about traffic? I don't know what was going on that I didn't have that experience. But it was funny because I had gone, I just, I'd done a tape in my living room that was 18 pages of material and I had like a day to prepare. And my buddy came and taped it with me. And then I went to a wedding in New Orleans. It was a Friday and I flew to New Orleans like that night. And it was on Sunday of that same weekend. I got a call and they said, can you be in L.A. on Monday morning. I was like, uh, yeah. yes and I flew and I realized I had a packed for a weekend and I left my jeans in the hotel so I had no pants I get to LA with no pants you know and so I had to just figure out the city and they wouldn't HBO wouldn't let me meet David Fincher Sony and HBO couldn't agree that they didn't know if the show was going to get picked up and they didn't want me to meet David if I wasn't actually going to be released to do the movie so they were putting off our meeting for a week so I ended up changing my flight three times or something and I was in LA for I don't know seven or ten days and I didn't meet him. until the very last day, right before I flew out of town.

And I booked a guest star spot. So I flew home, repacked a bag, and came back to L.A. and shot for 10 days on a CBS show. And then I was in a trailer, I think, on the lot when I got the call 10 days after my audition that I was actually, you know, going to do the film. But it was a very, very strange time. When did you know that you were cut from the same cloth as our dark genius that is David picture?

Well, I think the way the character was written, I know he was in my, when I went to audition, I read, David read all the scenes with me, and he gave me adjustments, I think, to see if I could take adjustments, namely, to see if I could take direction. But I could tell that he was certainly comfortable in that tete-a-tete, the rhythm of that piece, you know, was very clear from the onset that he really, he was the dark, dry guy that he turned out to be. And then on set, just the way he was making fun of everyone's. close to my heart. So I think we fell in pretty quickly to a nice rapport. What would you say to an actor that's about to work with him? What would you? Yeah. Don't make it about you. If you make it about you, you're going to get in your own way. Just accept that you deserve to be there. You know, you're there for a reason. He believes you can deliver. And believe me, he won't let you go until the end of the day when he's gotten it. if you don't get it you'll still be there so if you've left that means you got it so just accept that and move on and know that he's he is a perfectionist but he's looking at the whole picture and so

you can't take it personally right if it's about you you'll know you'll know that too and you just have to keep breathing and listen and keep trying to get it right and and also he he loves we talked about this a little bit the last time but he does try to wear actors down so they they get rid of their habits and but he also so for that reason he actually loves an organic mistake i i bobbled the phone in one take and i broke and he was like ah that was it because it was really funny you know because it was a real person making a real mistake which is what he really loves so it's not about being mechanical actually it's actually about being human um but i think it gets misconstrued often when you hear the horror stories about you know getting fired from the david fincher movie but um he was

also i think in a really we i think we were working with him at a really good time in his life life. I think he was in a really, he just felt really relaxed and present and kind of like he was enjoying his life in a way that maybe, you know, maybe he hasn't always, I can't say. But it was fun. As we tape this, I think Mank is about the drop on. Oh, I know. And his dad wrote it. I know. I haven't seen it yet. I can't wait. I actually saw some stills from it. But it's gorgeous. Yeah, I got a chance to check it out. It was a special day in the Horowitz household when a new Fincher movie comes out. Yes, I can't wait. There's a lot of buzz. The buzz, buzz, buzz out there.

As you look back a few years removed from leftovers, I mean, you must have in those three years appreciated Nora and appreciated what an unusual show that was, an amalgam of Tom Farada's satire and David Lindelof's brilliant writing. But do you look back at it differently now with a few years removed? Do you appreciate it more? What's your perspective on that experience now? Oh, I think I understand.

that it will be, if something like that comes along my way again, it'll be like lightning striking twice. It was just such an unusual show. And it asked so much of me, just as an actor, as a woman, you know, women's roles are often pretty narrow. And that, you know, you know the scope of what I got to do in that show. It was breaking things, getting mad and shooting things. And it was just really fun. And I know how rare it is to come across something like that. It was really challenging. It was the first time, I mean, that when I did episode six, that was the longest. I'd ever been, you know, on camera at a stretch, you know, in that sort of length, that sort of rigorous 10-day shoot or whatever it was or seven-day shoot. So I learned a lot on that show. But it also

taught me about just standing up straight and my voice, my voice got lower, actually, over the course of the show. I figured out to root it a little bit better because she was so grounded in a way. You know, she just was walking into rooms and standing up for herself in a way that I never learned to do. So she really taught me that. And yet at the beginning of every season, it always feels like putting on a wet bathing suit. I always say, like, you know it's your bathing suit, but it's a little uncomfortable. But she was a gift.

I don't know how this makes me feel, but I heard you say in another conversation that probably the photograph, the still, the poster that you sign the most is for your role in Avengers as the great proximate night. But I only get recognized by leftovers fans. No one ever recognizes me, except, and sometimes. they recognize my voice. Somebody will hear me talking at a grocery door and they'll whip around and be like, Nora Durst, it's the strangest thing. And I, and as you were, you asked before, what, you know, sort of how do I, when I look back on it, how does it feel? But especially during

the pandemic, more people have watched the leftovers since the pandemic started it. And I'm having a resurgence of questions about it from journalists and also love for it on the internet and things like that. But whenever I do have an interaction with a leftovers fan, they are so devoted because they've had some experience in their lives that is about grieving or divorce or the loss of someone and they share it with me and so there's nothing trite about those interactions in a way that I find deeply satisfying you know I don't have them very often fly under the radar as you can see from this lovely hairstyle and tie-dye Biden shirt but um amazing I find it really really gratifying as an artist to get to have those conversations so don't be afraid everyone if you see me and you

want to tell me your story. Tell me. Yeah, share. I'm nice. She is. She does podcast twice for the price of one. I'm not getting paid. Oh, no. So we were talking a little bit about your viewing habits in the pandemic. I know you and Tracy were doing the big movie night when you were back in Chicago. You're now, as I understand it, moving into television series. Are you benching anything right now? Yes. What are you watching? Okay. See if I can't terrible. I always have you say, Tracy, what are we watching? We're watching. Okay, we're watching, no one said a thing,

the documentary about the vigilante killing in a small town. Oh, I don't know about this. Okay. They kill, a town killed their town bully in Missouri and then never, it's never, they've never revealed who it was that actually shot him twice.

So that's, and what impact that has had, that collective, you know, that bargain has had on the town. We're watching that. We were watching, Euphoria, we just started. We hadn't watched that. We just finished Penn 15,

too, which I really... A little lighter than the other stuff. Feels really truthful. Not all of it to me, but I thought, I think those women are just so. I think they're wonderful. What else have you watching? Oh, I won't... Something I won't mention, because I didn't like it very much.

I don't want to say what it was. That's okay. That's okay. Well, should we mention your comfort movie? Oh, and we're watching Homeland. We're watching the last season of Homeland because one of our dear friends is in it has a big part. So we had kind of, you know, we hadn't caught up in a little bit. So, and of course, Tracy was on that a couple of. Yeah, once Tracy's out, like, forget it.

Yeah, I'm like, I'm out. You did tell me last time we spoke briefly, and I want to mention it again because it's a great movie and worth recommending. I still have not seen it in about 30 years, but we had a mutual love and respect for your comfort movie. What was it again? Yes, it's Cinema Paradiso, because it was one of the,

it was maybe the first foreign language film I ever saw. I told you before, my grandfather's father ran a movie house in Akron, Ohio, when he was a little boy. And so he always had a real love for a film, and actually did a little bit of community theater. He's probably the only other actor in the family. So I'd go over to my grandpa Bill and Grandma D's house because they really helped raise us.

My parents worked, both of them worked, and they had five kids. And so we spent a lot of time with my grandparents who had both been retired in their 50s because they had a terrible car accident that they survived. But then they were available to help raise us, which was a godsend. So we'd go over and spend the night,

we'd always watch a movie. And that was a movie that he loved. And he, whenever I had friends come over them to spend the night, He would make all my high school friends come over and watch it because he'd like to watch them all cry. I was going to say, if you watch Cinema Party So, and you're not crying, you're dead inside. And yeah, and I was saying to you before, it has one of the great all-time scores from Ennio Marconi. It does. It does. The Marconi score is amazing. So it's, you don't want to give anything away about it. It's just a fun one to watch. It's a nice romantic, you know, just beautiful film.

So also romantic is The Nest, pure romance. yes the little horror there was romance in this relationship presumably at once and I think that's actually I'm glad you said that because one of the things I love about is I think you get a real sense of history I think you get a sense that they're really well matched and that they were probably a really good time people like to be around them you know right it's you and you and Jude law Sean Durkin the director of Martha Marcy May Marlene you know I like to say that so I have to say it and yeah this one has been talked about since, were you at Sundance, by the way, for this one?

We were. We were at Sundance, yeah. That's been quite a journey. Lifetime ago. I know. I was there too. It does feel like 3,000 years ago, doesn't it? Uh-huh. What have you learned about this film subsequent to making it in the conversations with audiences or journalists like myself? What have you said, oh, wait, that didn't even occur to me? It's funny. You know, the biggest change for me is how many people think of Rory as a psychopath or just really, you know, just a really damaged guy and that they don't think it dignifies Allison to stay with him

and they think there's no chance for this couple to survive. When I think of the movie is so hopeful, I do, because I think the movie ends at this place where, you know, they've made these tacit agreements and they've gotten away from that communication and now they have a chance to sort of start over from an honest place. And that's the only way any relationship survives. I mean, you can stay in a relationship too long without that. And marriages are built on less. But I really think they have a chance to make a profound change in their dynamic.

You alluded to this before. Do you write up a backstory? Do you talk to Sean about what was this marriage early on? Is that important to you, especially in a process like this and a story like this? It might have been important to me 10 years ago before I had a toddler. And now I don't have a lot of time. That's right. And well, here's the thing about a good script.

So Sean's script is really specific. The relationships are really specific. And if a script is really good, really, in my opinion, everything you need is on the page. If you show up and tell the story, you're most of the way there. I did have a meeting with Sean and Jude before we made the film. They very kindly came to my apartment because I had a little baby. And we talked through some of that stuff, the backstory and history. And I know that Jude and Sean really got into Rory's backstory in a lot of detail.

But I didn't do as much of that. Because again, I felt like there was a lot of clarity in the scenes. I knew what she wanted and what she was doing. And so after that meeting, it was just see you on set. I mean, aside from the horse training. Right. So I don't, I don't tend. I'm not somebody who does like an encyclopedic backstory.

I might do a couple of exercises I've learned if I'm, you know, like what do the characters say about you and what do you say about yourself? But that kind of goes out the window after we start, especially because I had a baby and no husband, you know, when I was shooting. There was no time. Well, this is an all too rare leading performance for you in a film. We've seen you obviously carry the screen in several television series, but hopefully, judging from the reviews and the reception, this leads to more opportunity.

I hope. I think it's the kind of film that filmmakers will see. And if filmmakers see it, then maybe they'll give me a job. The right people will see this, definitely. Speaking of right people, every actor loves Jason Reitman. Why do actors love Jason Reitman so much? I mean, I love him too. He's great, but what happens on set that's so fantastic?

I didn't know Jason at all. I should say, sorry, just to contextualize, you worked with him on the new Ghostbusters. I did. And like I said, he's the only person who could revive that franchise in a really, I think, authentic way. And he, well, again, this was a really flattering moment for me because it was an offer. They called me in to read it. And I got to go into the Sony offices and read the script. And I really liked it.

But I found out Jason just called me on a cell phone one day. He got my number and he called me. And he had called every director I'd ever worked with. ask them if I was funny. He was worried I wasn't funny. So that was my introduction. I think that you're hilarious. I mean,

I think I brought a little lightness of being. There is a little something there. But I really actually appreciated that he called me and told me that. That's what he's been doing his homework. He was just really kind of straight up about it. There's something really no bullshit about Jason. Right. And he's,

but he's also like Fincher, he likes to just I don't know we gave each other a lot of shit yeah yeah I see kind of how we how we operated on set and the thing is too what I what I also like about Jason is there was maybe one or two times where I there was a line or something where I thought this doesn't feel character driven or I just don't feel like this makes sense and he'll really fight he'll really fight for something which and so will I and so we really you know we really had to convince each other a few times of why we were right but I loved it I loved being able to have that conversation the fact that that I felt like I could have that conversation says a lot about Jason. And ultimately, like,

he's just, he's, he's really chill on the set. It's not a high-strung set again, even though it's a huge movie with all these special effects and things. He's really all about the storytelling. And so he makes space for the actors to get what they need mostly. And also so many of our special effects were practical. It was important to Jason that we have puppets and dry ice and lights. And so that felt really satisfying too because it's not like we were doing everything in front of a green screen. They built a, they built a set on a hill. They built this house. I mean, it was amazing just how, how he surrounded us with kind of objects and settings that would fire our imaginations in a way that didn't require a lot of work, you know? It was great. Yeah, I'm so excited,

obviously, that's the, you know, that film, that film series hit me at the right age. And it's so funny to me because, you know, I've talked to Jason probably almost about every one of his films. And, we've talked about Ghostbusters and his dad. And for a while, he was like, you know, I'm the wrong guy to do the Ghostbusters sequel. And for whatever, I mean, like, if he's in a different place in his life, he's had different kinds of films he's made, I trust the Reitman, I trust the Jason Reitman. It's just funny to me that this is where he's at now. Yeah, it was so funny.

It was like this little thing that was burning inside of him that he was trying to deny. And then he couldn't deny it anymore. And now we have this delightful film. And I think it's really good. And it was lovely to see Ivan, you know, Ivan was on the set, too. So to see their relationship. as you know taking you he'd take notes from his dad and then he'd also sometimes politely declined to take notes from his dad and that was just a really you know it was really

loving and it was sweet to see that relationship actually the way it functioned on set was kind of kind of beautiful and you've got a bit of a sneak peek at the a cut of that film it's funny it works you're happy i think so i haven't really seen it yet i've seen some sequences from it and i did some a dr so i got to see some of the bigger moments which yeah it does work and the kids are great the kids it's just a great group of kids they just found the right right family we had a really good time and of course paul rod yes oh we know about that yeah he's charming and we get it young human perfection it's all that stuff um how this this is probably a long haul for you on gilded age are you just getting started is this months and months and months actually i'm about to wrap

my see my half of the season we're about to go on hiatus for the holiday and i'm actually done because of covid you know we we are block shooting on sets and we have two different families so we have two different sets. So I didn't work the first several weeks. I've been working pretty consistently for several weeks now. And then I don't work the last two weeks of shooting. So I'll come back in January or February with everybody. And we'll, I don't know, we'll probably go till June. So we're, you know, we're about halfway or less. Well, everybody that loves and appreciates Carrie Coon. And if you listen to this podcast, you have good taste. And by that definition, you of course will have Carrie Coon. You want to see the nest because she delivers an

amazing performance as always. And she's the leading lady. She deserves more of this stuff. Come on, guys. Come on Hollywood. Congratulations on the film. And I think we did it on take two. I will say, by the way, I know we've been yelling and moaning, or mostly me, about Spectrum.

The service today has been... Well, look, you think I didn't get into it? You think I didn't get into it, Josh? Really? Did you? I'm not going to live like this. Absolutely, I got into it. We had a whole reset thing going on. We get a whole thing.

You've hit buttons. You've restarted things. I didn't do anything. I was at work. Okay, fair enough. I had my guy do it. I had a guy. She's got guys.

She's got people. We know she's made it when she's got people. Thanks again for the time. And I'll see you on round three. Okay. Sounds good. Yeah. Pray.

Pray this recorded. And so ends another edition of happy, sad, confused. Remember to review, rate, and subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm a big podcast person. I'm Daisy Ridley, and I definitely wasn't pressure to do this by Josh. The Old West is an iconic period of American history and full of legendary figures whose names still resonate today like Jesse James, Billy the Kid and Butch and Sundance,

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