Safe to say, after recent star turns in “The Gilded Age” and the monologue of the year about friendship in “The White Lotus,” Carrie Coon is having a moment. 

I asked her, “Would you agree with me that where you used to say you’re at the bottom of the A-List …”

“I think I used to say, ‘The bottom of the B-List,’ but yeah,” she corrected.

“But don’t we need to revise our assessment as where you are?”

“Maybe,” said Coon. “But the thing that’s changed for me is that I was on ‘The White Lotus,’ and now I can be in a Broadway play. That wasn’t true for me five years ago.”

The play is “Bug,” which opened just this past week. Coon is leveraging her newfound star power to play the demanding, harrowing lead role in this examination of paranoia, conspiracy, and loneliness. And she is adamant that her success should not obscure a larger, sadder reality of the theater these days: “We live in a country that is fundamentally unsupportive of the arts. So now, in order to do a play on Broadway, you have to do ‘The White Lotus,’ or else you’re not allowed. They have to replace you with somebody more famous.”

“Hang on, if you hadn’t done ‘White Lotus’ and ‘Gilded Age’ and hadn’t sort of blown up as a star …”

“Yeah. We wouldn’t be sitting here, absolutely not,” Coon said.

“Your acting ability, what you do on stage, not enough?” I asked.

“No, that’s not how we make those decisions anymore,” she said. “And you can ask all these extraordinary theater actors who don’t do plays anymore because celebrities are doing plays. It’s just a different world that we’re living in now.”

Tracy Letts is the playwright of “Bug.” He’s in love with Coon’s fearlessness. “She has ice water in her veins,” he said. “In another life, she’d make a great assassin.”

He’s in love with her acting chops. “She’s a great stage actress,” he said. “For the people who’ve only seen her do ‘Gilded Age’ or ‘White Lotus,’ they just don’t know what a stage animal she is.”

Letts is in love with her. He and Coon have been married for the last dozen years.

I asked, “Your partners, your life partners, they had to be theatre people, right? Because it’s such a consuming world?”

“I came to that conclusion a long time ago that, whoever my partner was had to be in the profession; civilians just don’t get it,” Letts laughed. “They just don’t get it. It’s a hard life.”

A couple of Midwesterners (Coon is from Ohio, Letts from Oklahoma), they met in 2010 doing “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. Letts said, “We had a palpable attraction to each other. We just wanted to be with each other.”

Coon said, “When we confessed to our director and our castmates that we were officially together, they were like, ‘Yeah. Of course.’ We thought it was shocking, this shocking revel – [and they’re] like, ‘Yeah, hello! We’ve been here the whole time.'”

When the show got to Broadway in 2013, Letts won a best actor Tony. That’s some impressive artistic range, considering his Pulitzer Prize for writing the play “August: Osage County” in 2008, and his steady presence in film and TV for the last several decades, from “Seinfeld” and “The Big Short” to “A House of Dynamite.”

He’s been around a while. Coon noted, “Tracy’s entering into sort of this …”

“Oldness?” Letts offered.  

Letts is now 60; Coon is 44.

“He always gave me room to grow, because I was not in the same place in my life as him,” Coon said. “Like, what you’re sitting in contemplation of at this stage in your life is different than where I am in mine.”

So, how does that meld? “Oh, a lotta jokes,” said Coon. “Like, ‘Your second husband’s gonna love this couch.'”

Whether playwright and actor, or husband and wife, what makes this partnership work, they told us, is honest feedback and mutual respect. Letts said, “She knows I’m gonna tell her the truth. She’ll put on a dress and say, ‘How does this look?’ And I’ll say, ‘It doesn’t look good.'”

“No, no, no, no….” I said. 

“It’s true!” Letts reiterated. “And she appreciates it, because she knows I’m not lying to her.”

“Isn’t rule number one of husbanding, Not bad? Which we all know means… “

“No. We don’t do that,” Letts said. “So when she puts on something and I go, ‘You look fantastic,’ or when she’s in this play and I say, ‘My God, you’re a great actress,’ she knows I’m not bulls****ing her.”

Later, I asked Coon, “If you have something to say, whether it’s praise or criticism, you know it’s the truth?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Even with things I wear.”

Letts smiled. “See?!”

While any couple might recognize that trust required to navigate life’s challenges, Letts and Coon’s “moment” is providing some uncommon tests. Take Coon landing the “White Lotus” role: “I turned to Tracy and I said, ‘There’s no way I can go away to Thailand for six months.’ We had a three-year-old and a six-year-old. And Tracy was the one who turned to me and he said, ‘We’re gonna figure this out.’

“Tracy was doing every morning. He was doing dinner and bedtime every night, and bath time by himself. So that was a really hard six months.”

“I wasn’t doing anything extraordinary; I was taking care of the kids while she was gone doing a job,” he said.

“We know when the undeniable thing comes along, and we’ll both make room for that to happen,” Coon said.

Which is why this chance to collaborate on Broadway is so important for them. The best way to handle a whirlwind is to find a place to anchor. For these two, that’s always been the theater.

“This is where we’re most comfortable,” Letts said, “in a rehearsal room preparing this on a stage, doing this in a theater. This is what we know. You just have a sense of accomplishment and gratification in the theater. You’ve told a story over the course of the night. You don’t get to do that when you make a film or TV show.”

Carrie Coon and Tracy Letts are a couple now living in some of the culture’s brightest lights.  But they’re theater people – bright lights don’t faze them.  “I got my first credit card at 43,” Letts laughed. “It’s a tough gig!”

Besides, they have work to do, the kind that’s most affirming for them: Work they can do together.

Letts said, “I needed somebody who understood what it means to be an artist in America.”

“And I needed somebody who reminded me that it was important to be an artist,” Coon said, “and that it was powerful, and necessary.”

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Extended interview – Tracy Letts and Carrie Coon (Video)

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Extended interview – Carrie Coon (Video)

For more info:

     
Story produced by Gabriel Falcon. Editor: Carol Ross. 

Nick Reiner has not yet directly addressed the charges against him for the murder of his parents, Rob and Michele Reiner, but a newly released documentary looks at some clues leading up to the tragedy.

The documentary, The Reiner Murders: What Really Happened, analyses the 32-year-old filmmaker’s life before the tragedy struck their family.

It explores Nick’s 2020 diagnosis of schizophrenia and a recent change in his medication, which arguably contributed to the erratic behaviour and subsequent murders.

The medication made him “erratic and dangerous,” according to TMZ, and his behaviour got increasingly alarming a month before the murders.

The Being Charlie writer had reportedly been in a Los Angeles rehabilitation centre a few weeks before Rob and Michele were found stabbed to death in their home.

The outlet reported that due to the weight gain as a side effect of his medications, the psychiatric facility changed the prescription and that made him even more erratic.

The now-deceased parents were allegedly aware of the mental health crisis but helpless regarding a course of action to take.

Our first question to Oprah Winfrey: “You always wear really beautiful clothes. Always have. And I wonder if it’s a joy to get dressed now?”

“I can tell you what a joy it is to actually pack clothes that you know are gonna fit and you’re gonna feel good in them,” Winfrey replied. “I mean, it is a joy to get dressed. That is such a powerful first question, Jane Pauley, really!”

Powerful is one of the superlatives befitting Oprah Winfrey, one of the best-known and most-admired people on the planet, and one of the richest. But for all her success, she seemed powerless against a weight problem, a deeply personal struggle she has waged publicly and openly. 

In 1985, when her talk show, “AM Chicago,” was getting national attention, Oprah appeared on “The Tonight Show” with guest host Joan Rivers.

“And I’m sitting there, and we’re toward the end of the interview, and Joan turns to me and, ‘So, tell me, you know, how’d you gain the weight?'” Oprah recalled. Her response? “I ate a lot.”

“I was stunned in that moment, when I look back and I see that moment. But I left feeling humiliated and embarrassed, but not the least bit anger, not the least bit of anger or being upset about it,” she said.

Why? “Because I thought, ‘She’s right.'”

Over the next 40 years, Oprah would gain and lose hundreds of pounds. In the fall of 1988, after a strict four-month liquid diet, a new svelte Oprah appeared wearing size 10 Calvins, weighing 145, and pulling a wagon with 67 pounds of animal fat

It was all back, plus 25 more, when she went to the Daytime Emmy Awards four years later. “And I go to the Emmys praying not to win, literally praying not to win, because I don’t want to have to get up out of my seat and have everybody watch me do that walk to the stage,” she said.

She started over again the next day, working out with an on-call personal trainer this time. In 1994 she even ran a marathon.

Oprah knew how to lose weight … she did it over and over. She says her body was seeking a range of 211 to 218. “So usually, by the time I would hit 211 when I first went on the diet for the wagon of fat and pulled out the wagon of fat, when I did my first marathon, once I get to 211, I go, ‘Oh, I gotta do something.’ But now I understand that the biology of me, which is different than the biology of you and everybody else – every body, all of us, has our own – but no matter what I did, no matter how hard I worked, no matter what, it was always trying to get my body back to 211.”

Not because 211 is her ideal weight, but rather a “set point”: a genetically-influenced weight range. Oprah calls it the “enough point.”

“Enough” is also the title of a new book she co-wrote with Dr. Ania Jastreboff from the Yale School of Medicine, who says, for most people, an enough point is “the weight that they kind of always gravitate to.”

So, to lose weight, you cut back on calories, and start craving high-fat food , or you eat less – but nothing changes. “Our body’s like, ‘Well, if you’re gonna eat less, then I’m gonna make you more efficient. I’m gonna make you burn less,'” said Jastreboff. “So what happens is, together, collectively, we end up eating more, and burning less.”

“It’s the enemy within, which is in our brains,” I said. “So, now that we know what the problem is, the hormones that drive people, why don’t people just stop obeying it?”

“That would be like trying to control something that is not in your control,” Jastreboff said. “That would be like holding your breath for the rest of your life. Every time somebody says, ‘Just eat less, move more,’ we’re asking our patients to control their biology and hold their breath. And it’s just not possible. And why would we do that? We don’t do that for any other disease.”

And that’s what the American Medical Association says obesity is — a disease. A treatable disease. But the good news is that, if it’s a disease, it’s not your fault.

“It’s not my fault, Jane! It’s not my fault,” Oprah said. “And I could weep right now, could weep right now. I’m not going to! But I could weep right now for all of the many days and nights I journaled about this being my fault, and why can’t I conquer this thing?”

In the last decade, nearly a dozen weight management drugs have been approved for chronic weight management.  And for millions, drugs like GLP–1s are the answer to their prayers. Finally, a scientifically-supported, medically-approved weight-loss strategy that worked. And yet, Oprah resisted. “I was so motivated by shame that I felt I could not take the drug,” she said, “because if I took the drug – I, who had been the poster child for I can do it, I can do it, I can do it, willpower, willpower, let’s just get more willpower – if I couldn’t do it, then I would be shamed, and ashamed of myself for not being able to do it myself.”

The medications don’t work for everyone, and some can’t tolerate side effects ranging from nausea to gallstones. But it’s been two years since Oprah finally started medication, and it’s working for her. She says she is now down to her marathon weight of 155. “And so, that’s it for me. I’m gonna just try to maintain,” she said.

“Well done. Because I thought 160 was your goal weight?” I asked.

“Yeah, yeah, it was,” Oprah said, “but as I continue to work out here the combination of the medication and hiking every day and resistance training has given me the body that I had when I was running a marathon. So, I was 40 and feeling really good, but to be able to be 71 and feel that I am in the best shape of my life feels better than it did when I was 40.”

“I would submit that you would have been a phenomenal success, but I don’t think you would have become ‘Oprah’ if you hadn’t had the weight issue and been open about it and shared it,” I said.

“Yeah. I would agree with that,” she said. “And that’s why I don’t have any regrets about it. There’s a wonderful spiritual, African American spiritual, called, ‘I Wouldn’t Take Nothing For My Journey Now.’ 

I wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now
for my journey now
for my journey now
I wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now.

“I wouldn’t change the journey,” she said. “because I think the struggle with the weight actually helped me be more relatable and relate more to other people who were in their own struggles. But I’m glad now to be in a position where I feel the healthiest and strongest I have ever been.”

READ AN EXCERPT: “Enough” by Dr. Ania Jastreboff and Oprah Winfrey

“I feel free”

Oprah Winfrey grew up riding on dirt roads. Now, on her sprawling Montecito estate near Santa Barbara, California, she owns the road.  She took me for a ride: “This used to belong to my neighbor,” Oprah said. “So, this is 23 acres. Her house used to be right there. We took this fence down, so this became my whole backyard, this.”

Around here, all of the views are spectacular, especially the one looking back.

Born in Mississippi in 1954, Oprah Winfrey was a teen beauty queen who became a local TV reporter in Nashville, and then an anchor in Baltimore. “The beautiful thing about my life was that I started out in local television, as you did,” Oprah said. “And when you start out locally, you get this, like, little teeny-tiny thing. But I failed. I failed in Baltimore.

“They brought me in as a 22-year-old with an anchor guy, white-haired Jerry Turner, who was the most popular local anchor in the country, not just Baltimore. And he totally hated me. He resented me. He would do everything he could to condescend to me any way. I remember one time we were on the set and he said to me, ‘So, you’re from Mississippi? Can you name all the tributaries of the Mississippi River?’

“And I was, like, ‘All the tributaries of the Mississippi River? No, I can’t.’ He goes, ‘Well, what school did you go to?’ ‘Well, I went to Tennessee State.’ ‘Was that an accredited school? So, you got a degree?’ I mean, that kind of thing. This is in-between the commercial breaks.”

“Boy, that happened to me in Chicago,” I said. “Started in September, basically was taken off the late news in the spring.”

Maybe we share a few things. I was a shy kid from Indiana who started as a local reporter in Indianapolis, and wound up on national TV – and Oprah was watching. “You were such an inspiration. I remember calling Gayle that morning, ‘Oh my God.’ It just, it was unbelievable.”

“Well, that I inspired you!”

But Oprah famously went on to build her worldwide media empire, and a following that some world leaders can only dream of. 

I asked, “You have such power. Now that you are this woman undeterred by weight – ‘weight noise’ – what are you gonna do?”

“That’s a beautiful question, but I don’t feel compelled to do anything,” Oprah replied. “I don’t know what it means actually, other than I feel free.”

And what about her name being credibly bandied about for the presidency? “No, it’s not gonna happen,” she said. “What I really want to do is to continue to use who I am and what that represents as a force in the world, as a force for good, and to allow people to not let the noises of the world steal their joy.”

“You are such a person of positivity!”

“I am indeed,” she agreed.

For all of her astonishing success, it seems that Oprah is still always aware of how far she’s come – how she became something so much bigger than television. “I have to say, there’s a wonderful poem by Countee Cullen called ‘Yet Do I Marvel.’ And I would have to say, yet do I marvel at that, myself,” she said.  

“Sometimes in the early spring, the frogs are in the pond, and I can open the door and I can hear the frogs out at night. And it sounds just like Mississippi, being on the porch in Mississippi. But the distance from Mississippi to Montecito cannot be measured. It just cannot be measured. And I marvel at, how did this happen? How did it happen that I was able to navigate the waters of racism and sexism and misogynism and all the things that we had to endure? Yet do I marvel!”

And marvelous, it is.

I said, “We have little bits of things in common, I’m happy to say. Little bits of things.”

“Yes. A lot,” Oprah said, “because we were women of this business at a time when it was really tough to be in this business. And now it’s become something else. It’s become something completely new.”

“But both. It was a time that was tough to be a woman in the beginning. But boy, was the timing good!”

“Boy, was the timing good! We made the best of it. Yes, we did.”

For more info:

• “Enough: Your Health, Your Weight, and What It’s Like To Be Free” by Ania M. Jastreboff, M.D., Ph.D., and Oprah Winfrey (‎Avid Reader Press), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats, available January 13 via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org
• oprah.com
• Ania Jastreboff, M.D., Ph.D., Yale School of Medicine

      
Story produced by John D’Amelio. Editor: Remington Korper.