Carrie Coon interview: ‘The Nest’

Thanks to “The Nest,” Carrie Coon got the rare opportunity thus far in her career to lead a feature film. As Allison, one half of a married couple who uproot their lives in 1980s America in favor of an old country manor in England, Coon was drawn to how the script explores marriage in a way we don’t always see in the movies. “It felt really authentic,” says Coon in an exclusive new interview for Gold Derby. “I had never seen marriage dealt with this way. Normally there’s a divorce, there’s a death of a child, there’s an infidelity, but this was really just about marriage.” Watch the full video interview above.

One of Allison’s biggest passions is caring for horses. Throughout the film we see her give horseback riding lessons and tending to horses, providing some stability as she feels like a “fish out of water” in her new English environment. “One of the best ways into it for me was the horse training because that is a particular kind of grounded-ness,” explains Coon. “To have to center yourself in that way is so instructive.” There is also a particular way of handling horses that Coon observes is analogous to Allison’s relationship with her husband, Rory (Jude Law). “She’s the tether. She’s the ground underneath Rory’s feet and yet, the kind of dreaming he’s doing is really intoxicating and who wouldn’t want to be enrolled in that dreaming?”

“The Nest” is also notable for its 1980s setting. Coon points out that the film taking place in a time period outside of our own can still inform what we’re going through as a society today, especially because of its tasteful approach, eschewing the stereotypical bold and outlandish style as is often depicted in films set in the ’80s. “What the movie does is it takes Allison out of her life as an entrepreneur — she’s a working mom — and thrusts her into purely being a housewife in a way that she hasn’t been before,” states Coon. “It allows us some distance from the issues we’re still struggling with.”

Coon has already earned awards attention for her performance in “The Nest,” collecting a Gotham Award nomination for Best Actress. It is the latest of numerous accolades Coon has received in her career, following an Emmy nomination for “Fargo” and a Critics’ Choice Award for “The Leftovers.” The actress reveals that more people have been discovering her work in “The Leftovers” this year, considering the show’s dealing with grief is “applicable” to our collective experiences with the pandemic. She credits her character, Nora Durst, for helping her learn something through the way she carries herself. “There’s a kind of backbone to her that I am so grateful for that I didn’t have,” she admits. “Not that I didn’t have — I guess it was in there — but I didn’t know how to use it.”