Carrie Coon Reveals How ‘The Gilded Age’ Marriage Reflects Her Own With Tracy Letts
The actress opens up about how her ‘Gilded Age’ character’s marriage reflects challenges in her real-life relationship.
Carrie Coon sees parallels between her character Bertha Russell’s marriage on The Gilded Age and her own relationship with husband Tracy Letts.
During a November 4 appearance on Radio Andy’s The Julia Cunningham Show, the actress opened up about how the challenges facing Bertha and George Russell reflect some of the realities of her own marriage.
“I love that one partner is in a different place than the other one, and they have to kind of find their way back to each other,” Carrie—who has been married to Tracy since 2013—told Julia. “And that feels really real to me, those stakes, and that’s what really happens.”
Carrie, 45, explained how the 15-year age gap between her and Tracy shapes their relationship.
“I mean my husband is 15 years older than me,” The White Lotus actress said. “He’s in a really different place in his life than I’m in. And the reality of it is, there are things about what he is going through right now that I’m not gonna understand until I’m 61. So, it just feels very real and lived in.”
“And sort of the fact that Bertha’s gonna have to take care of George in ways that are very intimate, even when they’re still emotionally far apart,” she added. “Because that’s what the work of marriage is.”
Carrie and Tracy are also set to appear together in the upcoming thriller The Liberation. Still, Carrie explained why Tracy prefers to stay on the sidelines when it comes to her television work.
“He’s pretty good at not encroaching, one of the reasons why,” she said. “I think they would snatch him up in the Gilded Age in a heartbeat. But he likes consuming it as a fan. He likes not knowing what’s happening. So in some ways I think it would be too much of a peak behind the curtain and he would lose some of his enjoyment.”
Carrie also said raising their two young children makes working together more complicated.
“But then you have to find a babysitter when you’re doing scene work together,” she told Julia. “That’s the tricky bit. He also understands what it means to be a supporting part because he’s an ensemble theater guy. So he’s very happy to have me out here promoting The Liberation when he’s watching the kids, or promoting I Play Rocky, which he’s in.”
Catch Julia’s full interview with Carrie Coon on “The Julia Cunningham Show” on car radios and the SiriusXM app on Radio Andy (Ch. 101).
