Tracy Letts says wife Carrie Coon said no to ‘Avengers’ film over pay

Tracy Letts said the reason his wife, Carrie Coon, a costar in Avengers: Infinity War is not a part of Avengers: Endgame came down to salary.

“I believe [Marvel] went to her for the second one, and they asked her to be in the second one,” Letts said on a recent episode of The Ringer’s The Big Picture podcast, per PEOPLE. “And she said, ‘Well, the first one is the most successful movie ever made. Are you going to pay me any more money?’ And they said, ‘No. We’re not going to pay you any more money.'”

Released in April 2018, Infinity War grossed $2 billion at the global box office, becoming only the fourth film to do so, just seven weeks into its run.

“She said, ‘Wow, you’re not going to pay me any more money, then I don’t think I’m going to do it,'” Letts continued. “And they said, ‘Well, you should feel yourself fortunate to be part of the Marvel Universe.’ So she declined.”

Letts and Coon married in 2013, five years before she played villain Proxima Midnight in the MCU. The character didn’t have any lines in Endgame, having died in the previous movie. But she did appear on screen.

“We would’ve made a bigger deal out of this,” Letts said, “but it would have involved us watching the movies, and we weren’t going to do that.”

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EW has reached out to Coon and Marvel for comment.

Coon declined playing the part again because of a scheduling conflict, she said in an August 2020episode of PeopleTV’s Couch Surfing. But she said that audiences shouldn’t rule her out of future projects.

“No one ever dies. It’s very possible I could have my own Avengers movie next,” she joked. “But I wouldn’t hold your breath.”

Coon explained in May 2018 how she came to play the part in the first place.

“It started as a voiceover audition,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “They were just looking for the voice of Proxima Midnight, and [they reached out] perhaps because they were interested in my voice or maybe because I’ve actually done motion-capture work previously. I used to do motion-capture work for video games, back in Madison, Wisconsin. I was an athlete in college, and so it was very physical work that I enjoyed tremendously, and I had such a ball working on it.”

Coon is currently starring on the third season of HBO’s The White Lotus. This time, her character is a human, Laurie Duffy, who’s vacationing only somewhat successfully with two old friends (Michelle Monaghan’s Jaclyn Lemon and Leslie Bibb’s Kate Bohr). She also stars in the network’s period drama The Gilded Age, the third season of which is expected this year.