Times Colonist

Checking in with CARRIE COON

- BY GEORGE DICKIE

Ever the stage actress, Carrie Coon is well-versed in getting on with the show no matter the conditions.

So when it came to donning a restrictiv­e corset for her role as 19th century railroad tycoon wife Bertha Russell in the Monday HBO period drama “The Gilded Age,” the Tony and Emmy nominee was nonplussed.

“I’ve done some out-of-door Shakespear­e, outdoor summer stock where you’re in a corset and it’s 90 degrees and your costumes are made of upholstery fabric so it can withstand any weather,” Coon explains, laughing. “So in some ways it was not as hard as that. And in some ways I think the heels are harder than the corsets. But then I got pregnant a quarter of the way into the shoot and I outgrew my corset pretty quickly.”

That pregnancy resulted in her second child with her husband, actor/playwright Tracy Letts (“Lady Bird”), after filming on “The Gilded Age” wrapped in the summer of 2021. But Coon says she reaped the benefits of being in the family way on set, as the corset quickly disappeare­d and various methods were employed to conceal her growing abdomen.

“You know, the costume department was responsibl­e for a lot of the masking and they did a marvelous job just sort of using optical illusion to make me look, you know, slender,” the Ohio native says with a hearty laugh, “and then (they) ultimately had to rely on some CGI and a well-timed carriage or horse. So I was very comfortabl­e.”

Full name: Carrie Alexandra Coon

Birth date: Jan. 24, 1981

Birthplace: Copley, Ohio

Education: B.A. in English from the University of Mount Union (Ohio); M.F.A. in acting from the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Movie credits include: “One in a Million” (2012), “Gone Girl” (2014), “Strange Weather” (2016), “The Keeping Hours” (2017), “The Post” (2017), “The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter” (2018), “Avengers: Infinity War” (2018), “Kin” (2018), “The Nest” (2020), “Ghostbuste­rs:

Afterlife” (2021), “Boston Strangler” (forthcomin­g)

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