Carrie Coon on Likability, Cults, and Her Film The Liberation

Carrie Coon has never been interested in playing characters who are easily digestible or universally adored. In a recent interview at the Vancouver International Film Festival, where she was honored with the festival's inaugural Luminary Award, the actress made her artistic stance explicitly clear. She believes that likability is a vastly overrated quality in storytelling, arguing that it is far more engaging and truthful to portray individuals who are messy, complicated, and entirely unconcerned with winning over an audience. This fearless attitude has defined Coon's remarkable career journey, which spans from the rigorous stages of Chicago's regional theater scene to Broadway, and eventually to critically acclaimed television and film projects like The Leftovers, The White Lotus, and The Gilded Age.

At the festival, Coon discussed her role in Guy Nattiv's film The Liberation, which was shot on location on Vancouver Island. The movie follows Rita, a Holocaust survivor who makes the dramatic choice to leave her family behind and join an all-female cult led by a charismatic figure played by Lily James. The narrative is deeply personal, inspired directly by Nattiv's own grandmother, whose archival testimony was meticulously recorded by Yad Vashem. Ahead of production, Coon immersed herself in studying this archival footage, finding it essential to grounding her performance in authentic human emotion and historical reality.

Reflecting on the psychological dynamics of the film, Coon shared her fascination with the genuine vulnerability displayed in the historical testimony and how difficult the survival process truly was. She noted that Rita's ability to heal only emerged when she was deeply embedded within the alternative community of the cult. This led Coon to ponder a central, uncomfortable question about why intelligent individuals willingly abandon conventional lives for fringe societies. Rejecting the simplistic trope that cult victims are merely gullible or unintelligent, Coon argued that such assumptions prevent audiences from understanding the true nature of vulnerability. She pointed out that many people who fall into these situations are spiritual seekers, intelligent individuals whose profound inner needs happen to align with a predatory charismatic leader.

Within the confines of the cult, Rita discovers elements that had been entirely absent from her ordinary life. She finds profound female friendship, a space for self-exploration, an outlet to process her unspeakable trauma, and even the simple joys of singing and dancing. Having been robbed of her childhood by the atrocities of the Holocaust, Rita experiences a regression into a childlike state within the community. Coon defends the emotional complexity of her character's choices, emphasizing that Rita was both controlled and deeply attached to the cult leader. She challenges audiences to refrain from judging how survivors choose to process extreme trauma, noting that people must do whatever is necessary to heal and persevere.

Beyond the specific narrative of The Liberation, Coon used the platform to offer broader philosophical reflections on human society and social constructs. She observed that modern civilization relies entirely on arbitrary rules and social agreements that people have invented. According to Coon, society establishes these behavioral boundaries and then shames anyone who steps outside of them, even though the foundations of these rules are entirely artificial. This lack of inherent judgment also forms the bedrock of her craft as an actress. She insists that an actor must never judge the character they are portraying, because true compassion requires acknowledging the vast and sometimes terrifying capacity of human nature from the inside out.