Actress Carrie Coon’s meaty film and TV roles have tended toward the serious: a grieving wife and mother on HBO’s The Leftovers, a loyal sister defending her brother from murder charges in David Fincher’s Gone Girl, and a woman striving to break into high society in HBO’s The Gilded Age. She also memorably starred in a 2012 revival of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, for which she received a Tony nomination.
But Coon tells The Treatment her real life personality is much lighter than all that. And she’s really leaning into the levity in the new season of HBO’s The White Lotus. In the latest installment of Mike White’s fiercely beloved anthology series, she stars as one of three friends on a girls trip to a luxury resort in Thailand. Coon says that filming the show for six months so far away from home afforded her a break from her everyday life… and gave her time to reflect. Plus, she shares her beliefs about what people are actually looking for when they go away on vacation, and marvels over how well White knows his characters.