Carrie Coon stunned Late Night viewers by revealing she canceled two Bug performances after her throat closed onstage, moments after squirting fake blood into her nose.
The actress, 44, told Seth Meyers the Jan. 7 cancellations-one mid-matinee and one evening-were “my fault,” explaining that the prop triggered a laryngeal spasm that struck “every 12 seconds” and forced the production to halt.
At a Glance
- Carrie Coon confessed on Jan. 15 that she caused Bug‘s Jan. 7 double cancellation.
- The trigger: fake blood sprayed into her nose during the psychological thriller she stars in.
- Over-the-counter meds failed; an acupuncturist and masseuse saved opening night.
- Why it matters: The behind-the-scenes crisis nearly derailed the Broadway debut written by her husband, Pulitzer winner Tracy Letts.
The Onstage Crisis
Coon described the moment during the Wednesday matinee at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre when the routine effect turned dangerous.
“I began to cough… my throat was closing every 12 seconds,” she said.
She tried to power through, but the spasms distorted her voice, prompting director David Cromer to ask, “Are you okay?”
She replied, “No, no I’m not okay.”
Aides sprinted to a pharmacy, returning with Afrin, Pepto-Bismol, and Advil.
“Nothing helped,” Coon recalled, so the company canceled the rest of that show and the night performance, citing “an illness in the company,” according to a rep who spoke to News Of Losangeles on Jan. 7.
Race to Save Opening Night
With the official Broadway opening set for Jan. 8, the cast and creative team faced an uncertain 24 hours.
Letts, whom Coon married in 2013, proposed a radical fix: embrace the ailment as part of the character’s trauma.
“He said, ‘It’s okay, maybe Agnes has this problem… we’re just going to embrace it,'” Coon told Meyers.
Meanwhile, Coon tried alternative remedies:
- An acupuncturist inserted needles in her ear.
- A masseuse worked on her neck and shoulders.
- She rallied the company with a speech framing the spasms as a dramatic choice.
At 5 p.m. on opening night, the spasms vanished.
The curtain rose to strong reviews and a cheering audience.
About Bug
Letts wrote the claustrophobic drama in the 1990s; it now makes its Broadway bow.
Coon plays Agnes, a lonely Oklahoma waitress who holes up in a motel room with Peter, a Gulf War veteran played by Namir Smallwood.
Their paranoid chemistry fuels 90 intermission-less minutes of conspiracy-laden tension.
The production marks the first time Coon and Letts have collaborated onstage since their off-Broadway courtship years ago.
Key Takeaways
- A prop mishap-fake blood up the nose-triggered a medical emergency that halted two performances.
- Quick thinking by Letts reframed the crisis as character texture, saving the opening.
- Bug is now running at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre with Coon earning praise for turning real distress into dramatic fuel.
