Talking <i>The Post</i> and <i>Lady Bird</i> With Tracy Letts
Tracy Letts was a celebrated playwright long before he became one of Hollywood’s most in-demand character actors. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for August: Osage County in 2008 and wrote numerous other hits like Bug, Man From Nebraska, and Superior Donuts, many of which premiered at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago. But 2017 was a banner year for Letts on the film-acting front, given his notable roles in two major Oscar contenders.
In Greta Gerwig’s coming-of-age movie Lady Bird, Letts gives a quiet, affecting performance as the title character’s father Larry McPherson, a computer programmer struggling to find a job in the year 2002. Larry serves as an even-handed conciliator between his tempestuous daughter Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan) and his equally strong-willed wife Marion (Laurie Metcalf). Letts is also in The Post, Steven Spielberg’s account of how the Washington Post publisher Katharine “Kay” Graham (Meryl Streep) and the executive editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) covered the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Letts plays Fritz Beebe, Graham’s trusted adviser, who’s a similarly steadying force in the film’s most pivotal scene.
talked to Letts by phone about taking part in two of the most acclaimed movies of the year, the different) on screen for the first time in . This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
