Bruce Glikas/WireImage
NEED TO KNOW
Tracy Letts' play Bug opened on Broadway on Jan. 8
The production stars Carrie Coon, the actor-playwright's wife since 2013
Working together is "not a challenge," Letts tells PEOPLE: "We just like each other and like being with each other"
Tracy LettsandCarrie Coon's partnership is solid — onstage and off.
Speaking with PEOPLE at the Thursday, Jan. 8 Broadway premiere of his new playBug, Letts, 60, reveals the secret to working with his wife when she's acting in one of his projects: "We just like each other."
Coon, 44, who's been married to Letts since 2013, stars inBugat New York City's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre as Agnes, a waitress with a fragile sense of reality. TheWhite Lotusactress and Tony-winning actor-playwright first met in 2010 while starring in Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company revival ofWho's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ,which marked both their Broadway acting debuts.
"We just like each other and like being with each other," says Letts. "We met working with each other, so we're fans of each other's work. So it's not a challenge."
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE's free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Asked about theabrupt cancellationofBug's two Jan. 7 performances due to illness within the company, theLady Birdstar confirms, "Everybody's fine."
Letts adds, "Live theater, baby. Ain't nothing like it."
First-look imagesof the David Cromer-directedBug, shared exclusively with PEOPLE, showed Coon onstage with costars Namir Smallwood, Randall Arney, Jennifer Engstrom and Steve Key. Letts' play was first staged in London in 1996 and has been produced several times since, including in a 2006 film starringMichael Shannon,Ashley JuddandHarry Connick Jr.
"I love this production ofBug," the Pulitzer Prize winner said of the Broadway outing in an August 2025 statement. "It's scary and funny and intimate, and it features five great stage actors working at the peak of their powers, under the direction of my long-time collaborator David Cromer. But what I love most about it is just how involving it is. When an audience is pulled into a story — when they lose themselves in it — it's a kind of sorcery. And it only happens in live theatre."
Letts and Coonsharea son, who they welcomed in 2018, and a daughter, who they welcomed in 2021. In addition to their collaborations on Chicago and New York City stages, the couple also starred together in 2017 movieThe Postand season two of USA anthology seriesThe Sinner.
Matthew Murphy
Following its Jan. 8 opening,Bugisnow playingat the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.
Read the original article onPeople