Elizabeth Olsen, Natasha Lyonne And Carrie Coon Swap Stories From Their Time In The Theater, And I Seriously Could Listen To Them Talk For Hours

Mine is being backstage. I was doing a workshop of a play for like three nights and I was backstage. It was the first event. I was 19 years old and everyone was in their thirties, and we were on our way downtown New York City and there was a door that I had to enter. And I was standing back there and I was so freaked out 'cause I was with all these professionals and I'm just in school and I had all these things going on in my head and I was running through my lines hoping I wouldn't forget them in the first scene. And I was like ‘All you have to do is walk through the door’ and like that shift of thinking… [of] nothing else matters. And it's so simple. You leave yourself and you enter this other person, and that's why we do this. [Laughs]

As a child actor, who was just sort of winging, it wasn't until I did theater that I fully understood the concept of the present moment. I think 'cause I'd only understood things at first, you gotta get it right or don't mumble or, later sort of like ‘be funny’. I remember one moment being on stage with Ethan Hawke in a play called Blood From a Stone. And I took a bite out of a sandwich that I made and like my person left my body because when I came back I was actually eating and I was like, ‘Oh, a third person made this’ like the character,

And Ethan looked at me, who does so much theater and he had those sparky eyes on him because we were playing siblings. And he's like, ‘Oh, you just ate the sandwich, didn't you?’ Because a play is such a weird, tiny container where you're doing it every day. And he's like, ‘Ah, look, look, the first time the baby actually ate the sandwich!’ And then we kind of walked off and we're sort of Ethan and Natasha again for a second before falling back in. But, I was hooked on that, then.

I was so young. I was such a good girl and such a straight A student. And, the other actor was just like, he goes, ‘You know, you can let it go a little bit more. And I was like, ‘yeah, yeah, it’s like, I know what you mean. I know what you mean. Yes. I understand.’ And then that night I really did kind of drop knowing what was coming next in a way that I really hadn't done before. 'cause I was still controlling it, still. And, it was the first time I really, like, lost control.