Carrie Coon is obsessed with the end of the world. Perhaps that’s the residual influence of her days working on a particularly apocalyptic HBO series—something left over from The Leftovers—but Coon gleefully admits to spending a fair amount of time thinking about the end of days.

“I try to show up every day and work hard, and know my lines, and try to have fun, and not bring my doomsday attitude to set,” says Coon on a new episode of Little Gold Men (listen below). But sometimes, The Gilded Age star just can’t help herself. “The Mormons know how to make a disaster pantry,” she shares, cryptically. “So let me just say: If you have any questions, look to the Mormons, because they’ve got it all figured out.”

Coon is not alone. Her Gilded Age husband, Morgan Spector, also shares her morbid fascination—something the rest of their cast knows all too well. “Whenever anyone’s around us on set, it’s just, ‘You guys, stop,’” she says, laughing. “We were talking about having like a doomsday podcast. The only reason we haven’t done it is because we really don’t have time. But maybe someday.”

Beyond starring in the recent Ghostbusters sequel, Coon is working on two HBO projects: season three of The Gilded Age, and the third season of Mike White’s The White Lotus, currently shooting in Thailand. Busy as she is, Coon is trying to focus on the present, and—despite her macabre tendencies—not worry too much about the future. “What is important to remember in an actor’s life [is that] my life is being lived on set,” she says. “My life isn’t lived when the movie comes out—that happens on the internet. That happens on Deadline. How a movie gets received in the world? I can’t control any of that. The only thing I can control is the experience I am having when I am living my life.”

Vanity Fair: The last time we talked, neither of us was sure about the fate of The Gilded Age. Now we know for certain that it’s coming back for season three. Everybody that I know is thrilled. How did you find out about the renewal, and how are you feeling about stepping back into Bertha Russell’s shoes?

Carrie Coon: I was in talks with The White Lotus when my agent said, just so you know, the confidential information suggests that this might be happening. And that was kind of the first inkling I got. I was thrilled.

Honestly, it’s the people watching it. The streaming numbers, I think, were just undeniable in a way [that] maybe they hadn’t been for a season. We were most certainly on the bubble. As you know, I was feeling very cynical about it. I was not hopeful. I was telling everybody I knew we were canceled. So I’m excited, and I know nothing about the storyline yet. I’m excited to read.

Once I saw that you were cast in The White Lotus, I was like, “How on earth could this possibly work, scheduling-wise?” How are you making it work?

Fortunately, it actually lined up pretty perfectly. I think we’re going to go into production on The Gilded Age in July. And although White Lotus will continue shooting in July, I will probably wrap out by June, just so they can get me back for Gilded Age. The fact that both shows are on HBO definitely worked in my favor, because everyone’s incentivized to make sure everything works out. I’m very grateful to the people. It’s always the boots on the ground. It’s always, like, the first ADs and everybody working together on the schedule. Now ask me about my husband and my kids. That’s a whole other problem [laughs]. I’m going back to Thailand, and my husband is taking care of the children. It’s a very modern marriage over here.

A very modern marriage is a good segue to talk about Bertha Russell and her husband, George Russell. They’re the new generation—the new money—and they’re doing marriage a little bit differently from their friend across the street.

That’s so true. We hear Agnes [Christine Baranski] alluding to the pains of her marriage, which are, as you point out, very common—a lot of marriages of convenience. Bertha and George are in a marriage that is for love, and some other things. Their ambition, clearly. They’re
working in parallel, and it’s respectful. Even when they fall out personally, they keep their eye on the prize. They show up for each other. And they work it out. It’s very progressive.

Obviously you’re not married to Morgan Spector in real life. But when he wore that shirt—that Bertha Russell fan cam shirt—I was like, “This is a real relationship.”

That’s right. I may have an answer to that shirt, and you may see it someday soon. But yes, I was very tickled by that. Morgan and I are great friends. And of course, I adore Rebecca Hall, and they adore Tracy [Letts]. We’re a great foursome. We’re a really good time. Except Morgan and I talk about the end of the world a lot, but otherwise we’re a great time.

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What has it been like to work on The White Lotus thus far?

I’m not allowed to talk about the show, of
course. I’ve signed an NDA. But you guys all know who’s cast,
so I think that’s safe territory. Mike is really brilliant at casting. He sometimes will put together actors who have very different styles and approaches, and yet he’s very good at taking care of everybody because he’s an actor himself. He’s very funny, and he’s a very smart director, and he gives excellent direction and I adore him. He doesn’t approach everybody the same, you know? It’s not just Mike coming at you as Mike. Mike is very sensitive to where actors are in their process. I’ve watched him navigate it, and it’s been really interesting to watch.

It’s a huge cast. It’s an international cast. And I think he’s playing with some really interesting dynamics. I think it’s something he would continue to do if they let him, because I think he would like to get bigger and more international and put together weirder groups of people—that’s what he’s passionate about. And I think that’s important in this world, to see people banging up against each other in this way. Of course, he’s satirizing rich white people, and he’s doing it very well. He’s really speaking to people who need to be spoken to in a really interesting way. He had a season about money; he had a season about sex. And this is his season about death. So here we are in this Buddhist country. It bumps up against some things in my own life right now that are really interesting to think about, and so I’m feeling incredibly gratified. And my family is incredibly stressed. [Laughs.]

I saw you on Broadway in 2012’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.

You nerd. [Laughs.]

I know, and I loved it. To go from that to The Leftovers to The Gilded Age to The White Lotus—do you see a through line, or do you just go from project to project? How did you navigate your career?

No. I think the charm of my path has been that I wasn’t one of those kids who knew I was going to be an actor, necessarily. I knew I was interested in it. I can’t lie and say that I wasn’t. But there was no room for it in my family’s lives. So I came to it late, and I’m glad I did, because I had a really full and interesting life up to that point—and got to study some interesting things and study abroad, which is what I always tell young actors to do. It’s, like, read books and travel and meet people and have a life, you know, and then it will inform whatever work you do. So I was always really just open to what the path might be, and always open to changing direction if the path closed. For that reason, I don’t have my sights set on anything in particular. I’m really open to the opportunities that come.

And fortunately for me, I’m really proud of my IMDB page. I think it’s, there’s a lot of great stuff on there. I’ve worked with some amazing showrunners—Damon [Lindelof] and Noah Hawley and now Mike. I’ve just been really, really lucky. And I don’t know what accounts for it. I mean, I know what I’m doing. I’m not like, “Oh, I can’t believe they keep hiring me.” [Laughs.] That’s disingenuous, right? I work hard. I’m trying to get better. I watch myself. I try to identify what some of my habits are. I read everything. I read all the reviews. I read good reviews. I read bad reviews.

A lot of people don’t watch themselves and don’t read reviews.

Oh, I love it. Look, we’re all going to die. Nothing somebody writes in an article is going to be the thing that kills me. A lot of other things are going to kill me, but that’s not one of them. I understand if you’re working onstage and you’re reading reviews while you’re onstage, you can get stuck in your head on that stuff. But also…I don’t know. I like to know how the work’s being received in the world. I think it’s important. I think I’m interested in that conversation about what art is doing. I’m part of what’s doing the art, and I feel like I have some responsibility to understand how that work is landing in the world—to help me hone in on the kind of things I’m
interested in participating in, and what’s something that I don’t think I want to put my name on.

This interview has been edited and condensed.