Carrie Coon's house was full of family the morning she learned she was nominated for an Emmy for her work on HBO's “The Golden Age.”
After a 16-hour day on the set of the third season of the historical drama, Conn’s mother, father, brother, sister-in-law and a few children arrived from Ohio for a visit. Including her children, the only family member not home on the morning of the Emmy nominations was her husband, actor Tracy Letts, who received his first surprise nomination for a guest appearance on HBO’s “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.”
That busy morning, her agent, Jacob Fenton, called to congratulate Coon on her casting as Bertha Russell, the ambitious social climber and wife of a railroad baron who sweeps New York City in the 1880s. Then the text messages about Letts started rolling in, and she realized that a double congratulations was in order.
Meanwhile, Letts went into town to take early photos and watched his wife’s nomination announcement in the makeup trailer, before putting his phone down. It wasn’t until he got a video of Cohn and their son sending their tearful congratulations that “I found out I was nominated,” Letts says. diverse.
Conn's mother immediately wondered if the double honor was rare. “She asked me if we had made history,” Conn says with a laugh. “She wanted to know if it was a big deal to nominate a couple, but of course it wasn't. I looked it up and found out there were three of us nominated.”
Cohn is right. Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor, as well as Naomi Watts and Billy Crudup, are also couples whose names will be read out at the Emmys. But Cohn and Letts stand out among the group as frequent collaborators on stage and screen. She has starred in three of his plays, and they both starred in USA’s “The Sinner” and Steven Spielberg’s “The Post,” though they had no scenes together. Most recently, Letts had a brief cameo opposite her in “Ghostbusters: Afterlife.”
But for the Emmys, they couldn’t be on opposite ends of the spectrum or timeline. “The Golden Age” is set in the 1880s, while “Winning Time” follows the Los Angeles Lakers as they changed the game of basketball a hundred years later. The only thing that connects the two shows is their HBO home and director Sally Richardson Whitfield, who worked on both shows and was nominated for an Emmy for “Winning Time.”
“It's our Kevin Bacon,” Cohn jokes.
Cohn's nomination comes as production begins on the new season of “The Golden Age,” a series that its stars were not expecting. “We were shocked because I was pretty sure we were done,” Cohn says. “The strike hurt everyone, and our choice wasn't picked up. So, ostensibly, for us, the show was over. We were looking for other work, and it was the Internet and the buzz that made us choose.”
Letts interjects modestly: “I wasn't shocked. I heard it from a distance.”
“He’s a gambler in our house,” says Conn. “He’s always right about these things.”
In the second season of the series, Bertha claims a social victory when the city's elite rise to cheer her on the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera House she helped sponsor. However, she has room to grow morally, having secretly secured this victory by promising to marry her daughter Gladys (Taissa Farmiga) to a duke.
“Bertha doesn’t feel morally implicated at all,” says Cone. “She feels fine because she thinks she’s doing the right thing. I think the source of her shortsightedness, her blindness to her daughter, is her own ambition. She’s been frustrated in the world, and she wants to set her daughter up for a level that’s not within her reach. So she feels very satisfied with the way she set things up before season three with the duke. The opera was just a microcosm of a larger structure, and Bertha is ready to break through her own glass ceiling.”
Warrick Page/HBO
As the story of the “golden age” continues, “Winning Time” came to an abrupt end when HBO confirmed on the night of the second season’s finale that the series had been canceled. Letts played Jack McKinney, the Los Angeles Lakers coach who implemented the high-energy style of play known as Showtime. His time with the Lakers ended in the first season, but Letts returned for one episode in the second season to test the shaky leadership of his successors, Pat Riley (Adrien Brody) and Paul Westhead (Jason Segel).
“I thought one of the great things that Winning Time did was shine a light on hidden history,” Letts says. “I’m old enough to remember the Lakers on Showtime well, but I didn’t remember Jack.”
“I don’t think McKinley was one of the best players that season. So to highlight this guy, who certainly seems like he was one of the architects of the basketball that we see today, I loved that element of the show. And it was fun to go back to my wig and my clothes that I wore in the ’70s.”
Coon praised her husband's memorable work in a role that clearly resonated with audiences, despite only having two scenes in season two. Letts would go down as the only Emmy nominee among the series' outstanding cast.
“Tracy is a great coach, but he always says, ‘As long as nobody throws me a basketball,’” says Cone. “I made it clear that nobody can throw me a basketball, or I’ll be criticized right away.”
For those hoping to see Letts swap the basketball court for the high-end ballroom with Con in the “golden age,” he’s not interested in “tarnishing her reputation” — even though she’s asked him to several times. But he does enjoy watching the show and, more importantly, singing the orchestra’s theme song, which has no lyrics.
“Let's just say, he has a very specific way of singing that you really need to hear,” says Conn with a big, knowing smile.
