Carrie Coon is one of the many working moms in Hollywood, but her current job doesn’t just mean she is away from her kids from 9 – 5 or occasionally works a late night. No, as one of the stars of Season 3 of The White Lotus, Coon is on the opposite side of the globe from her kids, filming on location in Thailand.
And before the mom shamers start clutching their pearls and ranting about “abandonment,” Coon has a lot to say about working motherhood that will hopefully change the way busybodies think.
“Trying to balance a successful career, which I’m in the throes of right now, with raising young children means there’s always an opportunity cost,” she told Marie Claire, fully acknowledging that there are cons. “I either have to turn down a really great job or my relationship with my children will suffer on some level.”
Of course, the actress signed on to play the role of Laurie in the hit HBO series, and that has come at an “opportunity cost,” but she says her children are “are incredibly privileged and safe and well cared for.”
“They have wonderful people in their lives who support us,” she said. “However, women at all levels are struggling with this question of work-life balance that is absolutely impossible to achieve.”
Louder for the people in the back: “Absolutely impossible to achieve!” There will never not be a cost, and there will never not be a fly on the wall judging you for the way you work and/or parent. (Yay, motherhood!)
While filming, the “balance”(or maybe we should say “routine,” since “balance” is ever-elusive) Coon found was astounding — in the sense that instead of being a daily practice, it came in chunks. There were stretches of time when she fully worked and/or relaxed, and stretches of time when she was in full mom mode.
“For me, to go away [to film in Thailand] for weeks at a time, I would sleep when I wanted to sleep, somebody was cooking for me, and I didn’t have to clean up. I could read books and I could exercise and take care of myself. I could meditate, and I could go swim in the ocean,” she said. And we know there must be so many moms reading this who are probably equal parts pissed off and pining. Coon got to sleep when she wanted, was waited on hand and foot, and regularly practice self-care? What a sweet deal she seemingly had in comparison to other moms in the trenches of parenthood.
And she is fully aware of that fact.
“Being the arbiter of how I spend my time is something that I don’t know another woman who’s parenting right now has,” she said. “The idea that my career affords me the chance to step away from being a mother and then come back to it so that I can appreciate it on another level is a thing most women don’t get.”
She credits her husband Tracy Letts — with whom she shares a son, Haskell (born 2018) and a daughter whose name hasn’t been revealed (born 2021) — with “making space” for her to have this “tremendous gift” to live a creative life and do something she finds “really fulfilling.”
But, to the cynics who might hate on Coon for her ability to do a job she loves and take care of herself — all while taking time away from her young kids — it’s not all unicorns and rainbows. Because when there was free time during filming and her coworkers were jet-setting to Cambodia or Tokyo, she was hopping on an 18-hour flight to go back to her kids.
And when you’re in Mom Mode, there’s no time for trivial things like jet lag.
“I got pneumonia,” she said of the constant travel without sleep. “I was so sick during a lot of that shoot because I had to go back and forth.”
” … I got to go home to New York and do laundry and make dinner and make sure my children are feeling psychologically cared for, and make sure the nannies have the right schedule and that the swimming lessons are scheduled for the summer, and that all the bills are paid for these extracurricular activities,” she continued. “The responsibilities were just overwhelming.”
So fear not, mom shamers, sure Coon has a lot of support that most parents don’t have access to, and sure, she takes time to go pursue a fulfilling career that has enviable perks, but she also tackles the all-consuming tasks of motherhood when she is back with her kids.
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