Tracy Letts Shares He’s ‘the More Hopeful One’ in His Relationship with Carrie Coon

Tracy Letts and Carrie Coon are giving rare insight into their relationship.

While Letts, 60, and Coon, 44, spoke with The New York Times about their new Broadway production of his play Bug, Coon revealed where her mind goes on bad days.

“On my best days, I’m not thinking of the future or the past. I’m staying present,” she shared. “Which is what children are really good at. And on my worst days, it’s because I’m thinking about opening Bug or the way my children will be roasted looking for water in the future, running from cannibals after Tracy’s dead. So it’s very dark when I think about it. That’s where I land.”

The couple share a son Haskell and a daughter whose name they have not yet shared publicly.

“I’m the more hopeful one,” Letts added. “We have a 2-year-old and a 4-year old. And you just can’t have two doomsayers in the house.”

Coon and Letts announced that they would return to Broadway with Letts’ play Bug, which stars Coon, in August. The pair first met and fell in love while starring in a 2012 revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which marked Coon’s Broadway debut. She received a Tony Award nomination and Letts won a Tony for their performances in the play. (The couple married in 2013.)

“We were both in other relationships that were not working, and we recognized — kindred spirits, and, I don’t know, we fell in love,” Letts said.

“Talent is very attractive to me,” he said. “It is sexy. And my God, she’s a force.”

“I’d gotten to the place where I didn’t really trust anybody could hold what I viewed as my complications,” Coon added. “And I just learned from the jump that Tracy had the capacity to hold all of that. It’s in his writing, in his capacity to write women.”

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When Coon chatted with PEOPLE on the red carpet at The Gilded Age’s Television Academy For Your Consideration Event back in November, she shared that the secret to their marriage is communication.

“It’s always gonna be communication,” Coon says. “You gotta be honest. I mean, we’re around really attractive and charismatic people all year long. You have to talk about stuff, and it can’t just become when you have kids. It can’t just be about logistics. You have to make a point to seek out points of connection and make sure when you ask how someone is doing, you really mean it.”