Video: Carrie Coon and Tracy Letts Talk Love of Theater on CBS SUNDAY MORNING
Originally scheduled to play through Sunday, February 8, the production will now play through Sunday, February 22 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.
By: Josh Sharpe Jan. 12, 2026
It's Carrie Coon's world, we're just living in it. Coon, star of The Gilded Age and The White Lotus, is now starring on Broadway in Bug, the play written by her Pulitzer-Prize winning husband and collaborator, Tracy Letts.
During a joint interview on CBS Sunday Morning, the actress shared how her recent success on television has led to her return to Broadway after 14 years away. "We live in a country that is fundamentally unsupportive of the arts," she said. "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."
She went on to note how her celebrated acting ability, which was developed from a background in theater, isn't the leading factor of whether she can do a theatrical role — it's economics. "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."
During the interview, Letts also praised her acting, adding that those who have only seen her on television "don't know what a stage animal she is." He says that the two of them are most comfortable and satisfied when working in theaters, despite their other projects in film and television.
Watch the full segment, where the couple also shared their openness and honesty with one another, and recalled when they first fell in love while working on the 2010 production Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, which later moved to Broadway.
Manhattan Theatre Club's Bug, written by Letts and directed by Tony Award winner David Cromer, is now running at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Originally scheduled to play through Sunday, February 8, the production will now play through Sunday, February 22.
Bug stars three-time Emmy Award nominee and Tony Award nominee Carrie Coon as Agnes White, Namir Smallwood as Peter Evans, Randall Arney as Dr. Sweet, Jennifer Engstrom as R.C., and Steve Key as Jerry Goss.
This production marks the Broadway premiere of Steppenwolf’s acclaimed staging of a cult classic about an unexpected and intense romance between a lonely waitress (Carrie Coon) and a mysterious drifter (Namir Smallwood). What begins as a simple connection between two broken people in a seedy Oklahoma motel room twists into something far more dangerous. When reality slips out of grasp, paranoia, delusion, and conspiracy take over in this sexy psychological thriller.
