Carrie Coon stirred up buzz in September after she admitted to The Independent that she finds her performance in David Fincher’s “Gone Girl” adaptation “horrific to watch.” Coon starred in Fincher’s movie as Margo “Go” Dunne, the no-nonsense twin sister of Ben Affleck’s Nick Dunne. The part was Coon’s first notable supporting turn in a major motion picture. The actress said that when she watched “Gone Girl,” all she can see is “myself making faces. I think I can note my improvement as ‘The Leftovers’ goes on — I think I get better — but I find my performance in ‘Gone Girl’ horrific to watch.”
Headlines about Coon’s opinion prompted none other than David Fincher to email her about the role and her performance in the film. As Coon revealed to The Hollywood Reporter while promoting her role in Sony’s “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” “David, of course, emailed me as soon as that headline broke. (Laughs.) He was like, ‘It was really important for Margo to be really transparent in her emotional life because Ben is lying and is closed off. It’s a story point.’ And I was like, ‘I know! That’s not what I meant!’ So I was expecting to hear from David and I definitely did.”
What exactly did Coon mean by her original comment? “All I really meant to say was that between ‘Gone Girl’ and ‘The Leftovers,’ I got better because I had worked with David and Ben [Affleck] and Kim Dickens,” Coon told THR. “So I was engaged in a learning process in ‘Gone Girl,’ and so when I watch ‘Gone Girl,’ I see my learning process. I see myself learning. And then by the time I got to ‘The Leftovers,’ I was able to take what I learned and apply it in my work going forward. So when ‘Gone Girl’ and ‘The Leftovers’ came out in the reverse order, I felt like the culmination came out before the learning process came out into the world. That’s all I meant.”
“I just want to be the first person to say I don’t think it’s horrific or grotesque,” Coon added about her “Gone Girl” acting. “It’s just as an actor, I was learning and so that’s what I see when I watch my performance.”
Headlines about Coon’s opinion prompted none other than David Fincher to email her about the role and her performance in the film. As Coon revealed to The Hollywood Reporter while promoting her role in Sony’s “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” “David, of course, emailed me as soon as that headline broke. (Laughs.) He was like, ‘It was really important for Margo to be really transparent in her emotional life because Ben is lying and is closed off. It’s a story point.’ And I was like, ‘I know! That’s not what I meant!’ So I was expecting to hear from David and I definitely did.”
What exactly did Coon mean by her original comment? “All I really meant to say was that between ‘Gone Girl’ and ‘The Leftovers,’ I got better because I had worked with David and Ben [Affleck] and Kim Dickens,” Coon told THR. “So I was engaged in a learning process in ‘Gone Girl,’ and so when I watch ‘Gone Girl,’ I see my learning process. I see myself learning. And then by the time I got to ‘The Leftovers,’ I was able to take what I learned and apply it in my work going forward. So when ‘Gone Girl’ and ‘The Leftovers’ came out in the reverse order, I felt like the culmination came out before the learning process came out into the world. That’s all I meant.”
“I just want to be the first person to say I don’t think it’s horrific or grotesque,” Coon added about her “Gone Girl” acting. “It’s just as an actor, I was learning and so that’s what I see when I watch my performance.”