Brett Seybert

I knew there was something in particular that stood out about Carrie Coon, and this Joanna Robinson story in Vanity Fair finally helped me pin it down.

When Lindelof and The Leftovers novelist Tom Perrotta first auditioned Coon in 2012, she had just a few tiny TV credits to go along with her body of theater work. It was a certain midwestern stoicism that made her stand out from the pack and land the role of The Leftovers most tragedy-stricken figure: Nora Durst.

Coon, raised just outside of Akron, Ohio, has a straightforward, unstudied, demeanor distinctly different from her L.A. and New York-bred contemporaries. “To be an actor in a small town,” she says, “and to leave that small town,” means having that town “still be so much a part of your fundamental makeup that it’s inevitably part of your work.”

As Perrotta says, “Other people we looked at tended to make the choice to present Nora as extremely emotional. What you saw, with Carrie, was the effort of control. I think you’re always trying to be open when you watch people read for a part. But, we just didn’t have to look at anyone after that. It was just like, ‘Oh, there’s Nora. We found her.’”

That control that Perrotta speaks of is just so "it." It's that thing that made me love the character and Coon as an actor. And, of course, it's something that, as a fellow native of Northeast Ohio, I found instantly charming and recognizable.

The strength and stubbornness and stiff upper lip come across completely genuine and vulnerable -- and completely opposed to how these are often portrayed by male actors in less competent performances.

I find it incredibly interesting that show-runner Damon Lindelof gives Coon a lot of credit for helping the show take shape in its second season. The difference between season one and the second two seasons is really staggering. It's like a completely different show. Had they stayed the course with what they had started in the first season it would have been thought-provoking, but ultimately forgettable. The willingness to take it to some place completely different is what made this show great.

Here's Lindelof's quote:

I think that the tonal bandwidth of the show was just this one note on the way left hand side of the keyboard that sounded a lot like the Jaws theme. Carrie started playing notes on the right hand side of the keyboard, and minor notes, and chords. She began to demonstrate all these interesting roads to go down. It wasn’t that the other actors weren’t able to do that. It’s just we were really only writing the show inside this one key, and she was the first one who started moving outside that. When we started doing it for other characters, they were ready, willing, and able to partake. She was also funny, I think.

I have not yet watched season three of Fargo, but the second and third seasons of The Leftovers were some of the best television I've ever seen, and Carrie Coon was a big reason why (Robinson aptly describes it as "Coon's gravitational pull"). I can't wait to get caught up on Fargo now to see how these roles play off one another.