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As Tracy Letts will tell you, the first thing he asks when a project comes his way is, “Where does it shoot?” Well, actually, maybe the first question is, “What is the script?” Or, back up, the first question may be even more basic: “How can I help tell this story?”
That’s the kind of can-do attitude you might expect from someone with a background in theater. Letts, 60, began his career as both an actor and a writer at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater, the place that mounted the first productions of the landmark plays he wrote, August: Osage County and Bug. He’s about to head back to Broadway, this time as a director, shepherding a new production of Bug that will star his wife, Carrie Coon.
But Letts’ inherent practicality comes out in his screen performances as well, whether playing the kind of guy who can help navigate a nuclear crisis (as in Kathryn Bigelow’s new Netflix fim A House of Dynamite) or a ruthless Oklahoma business tycoon (as in Sterlin Harjo’s FX series The Lowdown). The two projects premiered within weeks of each other and within weeks of Letts helping stage another of his plays in London and starting work on Broadway’s Bug.
How in the world does a man with two young children (ages 7 and 4) and an equally in-demand wife manage all of this? “Carrie and I sit down and ‘do calendars,’ as we call it,” he tells me on this week’s Prestige Junkie podcast. “It’s just like planning the Battle of Midway every night as we try and chart the course of where we are and where we’re traveling to what the next gig is.”
An Oklahoma native who now lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., Letts is clear that he and Coon don’t take this abundance of work for granted, particularly when “we know a lot of people in this business who are really suffering these days,” he says. But it’s also very easy to tell why so many directors are reaching out to Letts, however intimidating it might be to send your script to a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. On the set of A House of Dynamite, for example, he eschewed any elaborate preparation (no basic training, no subsisting on K-rations) to focus on finding the real human being within his character.
Playing the general in charge of the United States Strategic Command, Letts is one of several key figures we see in A House of Dynamite who attempt to respond to a worst-case scenario: a nuclear missile of unknown origin speeding toward Chicago. The role is heavy on jargon, with Noah Oppenheim’s script based on extensive research into how this would play out in real life. “For me to pretend with authority, which is the job of an actor, I need to have some mastery of that language,” Letts tells me. Leaning on the script as well as the expert military advisers, Letts continues, “I had those guys to refer to constantly and say, ‘What do I do? What’s the job? What was your job?’ And now I’m pretending to be a general, and I’m doing it with some authority. That’s the gig.”
Hear much more from Letts about what he learned from watching Bigelow on set, and how he teamed up with fellow Oklahoma native Harjo for The Lowdown, on this week’s new episode. You’ll also hear my conversation with New Yorker writer Michael Schulman, one of our Prestige Junkie Pundits, who shares which Oscar season narratives are compelling him most, from the potential Timmy vs. Leo showdown to what now feels like a perennial Oscar season question: “What’s Bradley Cooper up to?”
