There are actors, and then there actors—the type of performers who bring a life and vitality to each and every role, no matter how small or large, and routinely take on gutsy projects that inspire extraordinary devotion and passionate defenses. They make everything they touch better, richer, and more complex.
Natasha Lyonne, Carrie Coon, and Elizabeth Olsen all fit the bill; they make the kind of work that sticks with you long after the credits roll. They have a true reverence for filmmaking—and the artistry that goes into it. And this month, they star as sisters in Azazel Jacobs’s His Three Daughters, which premieres September 20 on Netflix. The film follows the trio of estranged sisters, who all converge in New York City to be with their dying father in his final days of home hospice care. There’s Katie (Coon), the high-strung and opinionated eldest of them; Rachel (Lyonne), the middle sibling and a stepsister to the others, who has lived with and cared for their dad for the past year; and Christina (Olsen), the softhearted youngest.
His Three Daughters is a sterling example of the type of sensitive work Jacobs is known for as a filmmaker; his movies feel almost revelatory, with their dialogue-heavy, character-driven explorations of everyday relationships. It takes place almost entirely inside of a small Manhattan apartment, and the borderline-claustrophobic setting is transformed into a pressure cooker as the sisters fight over past traumas and vendettas while coming to grips with losing the one person who connects them. It also serves as a showcase for the extraordinary talent of the actors; Jacobs wrote the parts specifically for Lyonne, Coon, and Olsen, who all serve as executive producers on the film and have each built a vastly different but equally formidable body of work for themselves, both onscreen and off.
Coon, 43, has a revered theater career—she met her husband, the actor, playwright, and screenwriter Tracy Letts, while working on a stage production in 2010—and lends gravitas and emotional intensity to every project she touches. In addition to His Three Daughters, she will soon appear in the highly anticipated third season of The White Lotus, which premieres next year.
With her signature blend of wry comedy and gritty vulnerability, Lyonne, 45, has taken star turns in an eclectic range of projects that have become cultural touchstones. And more recently, she has taken on more work behind the scenes too, executive-producing and starring in Poker Face and Russian Doll (the latter of which she cocreated), while also directing episodes of both shows.
Olsen, 35, might now be most widely recognized for her roles in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including WandaVision and 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War, but she has used the visibility that comes with appearing in a superhero franchise to take on more dramatic and nuanced projects that allow her to explore different characters and facets of herself.
Coon, Lyonne, and Olsen all became fast friends while shooting His Three Daughters. Coon and Olsen even shared an apartment while making the movie. The three women recently reconnected to discuss working together, finding longevity in Hollywood, and the importance of taking chances.
Carrie Coon: I would like to ask you both, what was more important to you guys each day while we were filming, the scene we were doing or making Queen Bee on The New York Times’s Spelling Bee?
Natasha Lyonne: I would say that we had such equal passion for nailing both that the two really seemed to complement each other.
Elizabeth Olsen: I had a lot to prove, though. I was new to Spelling Bee, so I practiced.
CC: You always came up with a clutch word when it really mattered.
EO: I practiced every morning, on the drive in. Every morning.
CC: Your work ethic is reflected in everything you do.
EO:His Three Daughters had such a flow. I hadn’t had to memorize monologues in forever, and I wanted to approach it as a play because I feel like the work required that. And Carrie and I living together, sharing that apartment at work, we just drilled all the time.
CC: I have little kids right now, so I don’t have time to get ready in the way that I want to, and I was really underprepared for this movie. I was really scared. I don’t get scared very easily, but I was very intimidated by that. So I was grateful for that time we had together—though I still felt underprepared.
NL: I had my own place because it seemed like it was true to my character. I was running like a beast up there alone. I thought it was sort of like an exercise that was quite intentional, to separate me in a way that reflected the plot of the film.
EO: I was surprised when Aza shared the script with me that he wanted me to play Christina, because on the page she seemed so soft and sweet and loving. I was like, “I don’t know … I feel like I’m a Katie.” And Aza was like, “Oh, that’s so interesting. This is how I think of you.” And it was a part of me that I don’t reflect back onto myself. I don’t think it was a conscious effort—no one was trying to be a Method actor or whatever—but there was this amorphous thing that was happening just in how we hung out or communicated or just chilled in between setups.
CC: What I love about the film is I feel like Aza wrote it and shot it in such a way that the audience sees the sisters as they’re seeing each other first, and then slowly that image is complicated. And I think it’s actually really sophisticated, what he’s done. Our initial impressions of each other are quite base—they’re quite stereotypical in a way—and then that slowly opens up. There’s real subtlety in that filmmaking.
NL: We really did a lot of rambling-back-to-center kind of work, which is a funny thing about process and the arts. Essentially, you’re sharing the point of view of that character and where it diverges from or resonates with who you are or us as a trio. It’s kind of like “This is who I am” and “This is who she is”—meaning the character—and “This is where we converge.”
CC: When you’re watching a great actor onscreen who’s had a lot of experience, there’s a kind of comfort in that for the audience. They just feel taken care of. I knew when I signed up for this that I would be uplifted and taken care of in the scene work by you guys. And that’s such a comforting way to come to work, because so frequently it would be just one of us in a project. And it’s always an honor for me when I get to be surrounded by women in this capacity, because the industry was always so much about, like, “Well, we got one woman in there. Give ourselves a pat on the back.” But it’s shifted so much that three women of our respective ages can be in a project together.
EO: I feel like when you are able to make something with such a strong ethos that everyone participates in from step one, audiences see that. It doesn’t always work out that way, where everything that has that kind of heart gets seen, but it is a good reminder that anything that comes from a really pure, good place with a strong value system is incredibly important. People can feel it and see it, and they don’t feel like they’re being manipulated.
CC: Which is what the algorithms do. They try to predetermine what they think people want, when in fact it’s always been true that if art is good, audiences will see it. Like you just said, it doesn’t always work out that way in our industry, but, in general, the good stuff rises and is around forever. It’s what we keep returning to. Whenever you’re commodifying art, you get far away from that value system. In Thailand, where we filmed The White Lotus, you start off every project by having a blessing ceremony at a spirit house and by asking everyone for their goodwill. What an astonishing idea. What if we all approached the world’s problems in that way? Maybe we wouldn’t be where we are. … Natasha, you’ve been directing and producing so much. What approach do you take to those kinds of roles?
NL: I would say that I have a true love of exploring the human condition, and cinema is the blood in this old man’s veins. My obsession with shots and tempo and style, my love of actors and how it is that we go about doing what we do and telling the truth, my love of writing—just the filmmaking process as a whole is so core to who I am. It’s almost like my church, in a sick way. I feel so at home and alive on a set, in every direction. So my deepest love is being a part of a project from its inception and seeing it all the way through.
CC: Is it harder now, in some ways, to sign on to something that you’re just acting in?
NL: I recently completed a film with Taika Waititi called Klara and the Sun. It’s an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s book and stars Amy Adams, Jenna Ortega, and Steve Buscemi. Steve is sort of a similar type to me. He’s somebody I look up to a great deal, as a New Yorker, someone who has had a career that I greatly admire. Sometimes he’s the sidekick in a giant comedy. Sometimes he’s leading a gangster-throwback Scorsese production. Sometimes he’s directing an indie movie that he wrote. He seems to have traveled well through this business and maintained a sort of center. But it was such a joy to just be there on that set as an actor—and Steve and I had so much fun talking about that exact thing. I think I see it sometimes almost like being a traveling musician: Sometimes you’re leading; sometimes you’re helping. It’s like, how can you contribute best?
EO: That, to me, is the kind of longevity that I want for myself—to be able to go between projects that are your babies and then have the freedom to, hopefully, be lucky enough to work with a great director and be comfortable just getting to show up and play. Part of it, for me, is also about finding voices that I want to support. So yes, I’d love to be working with Jonathan Glazer and Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino and whomever; that sounds cool, and dreams do come true. But in the meantime, I get really turned on by finding people [to work with] where it’s either their first or second opportunity or their first narrative feature … or if there’s actually some personal digging that I get to do that I haven’t yet excavated or explored.
NL: I’ll add to that, Carrie, by saying that I just think of you with so much respect. I have you on such a pedestal. It’s so beautiful that you focus so clearly on the work.
CC: Well, I think that’s what I’m relying on, honestly. This is not meant to be self-deprecating, but right now I am what I would call a great “accessory” to a movie. I don’t get movies financed; that’s not the kind of career I’ve had yet. I’m a character actor, and as long as they get somebody who can finance a picture, they can add me to it and hope that I will be a net benefit to the project. That’s what I’m relying on for my longevity—my reputation for being an actor’s actor, a director’s actor, a team player, an ensemble actor. You guys know, I come from ensemble theater. That’s the way I approach the work. So my hope is that people think of me as someone who, if they put me in a scene, everybody in that scene will be a little bit better, just because I’m there. That’s what I want my reputation to be. I’m still in the position where I’d say the work is choosing me more than I’m choosing the work right now. But I’ve been very fortunate that the stuff that’s choosing me is high caliber and good quality, where I’m just grateful to be a part of it. I still have to fight, though, for everything I do, except for something like Aza’s movie, where someone comes to me. But you always hope that little film will crack through.
NL: Do you have a preference in terms of acting in front of an audience in the theater or for film or TV?
CC: They’re totally different. The skill sets overlap, of course, but what I love about the experience of doing theater is that you tell a story from beginning to end in order, which we never do in TV and film. So you get to go through the experience, and the climax actually has a rising action before you get to it. You’re not just crying at 3:00 a.m. because someone said “Action!”—and then doing it 12 more times. You’re actually living through a story. I always appreciate the kinds of muscles that uses. But if you’re doing a run for a long time, then you also have to execute technically, and I think that’s a lost skill set among younger actors. I think sometimes actors coming out of these programs don’t necessarily go through that gauntlet anymore. We used to start more frequently in theater. So they’re missing out, I think, on what that teaches you about what your whole body signifies in space. I love that about the theater. I feel like it keeps me sharp. But I think it’s been about two years since I’ve done a show, so I’m overdue.
EO: That feels crazy that two years is a forever long time for you.
CC: The theater is struggling right now. We haven’t really recovered from the pandemic. Sometimes I think it’s gone a little soft. We are not necessarily producing the things that are the most confronting. I’m hoping we’re going to swing back into the gross and irreverent. I think we need that in the world right now.
EO: I think that’s what everyone’s responding to right now. … Not like that’s our film; we’re not going to offend a lot of people. But I do think it’s worth offending people sometimes.
