The duo discuss their comedic neo-noir, which bows at Tribeca, and drop some tidbits about upcoming projects ranging from ‘Mission 8’ to ‘White Lotus.’

Carrie Coon and Shea Whigham in Lake George TRIBECA FESTIVAL

Lake George co-stars Carrie Coon and Shea Whigham are actors’ actors. They’re highly regarded by their peers, and they elevate every project they’re a part of, whether it’s an indie, a blockbuster or a prestigious cable series. And as soon as the audience sees them on the big or small screen, they immediately know they’re in good hands with the two reliable actors. The duo first worked together on season three of Noah Hawley’s Emmy-nominated Fargo series, and they spent six years trying to reunite until the SAG strike in the summer of 2023 presented a unique opportunity to do just that by way of an interim agreement.

The result is Jeffrey Reiner’s comedic neo-noir Lake George, which premieres tonight at New York City’s Tribeca Festival. The writer-director — who previously worked with Whigham and his daughter Giorgia on a 2018 episode of Dirty John — sent the Lake George script to the Florida native nearly a year before the July ‘23 strike accelerated the matter. And right when Whigham was about to make his frequent recommendation of Coon for the female lead role, Reiner beat him to the punch.

“When Jeffrey and I were sitting together one day, he went, ‘I want this actress that I’ve been thinking about while writing.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, who?’ And he said, ‘Carrie Coon,’” Whigham tells The Hollywood Reporter prior to Lake George’s world premiere in Tribeca’s Spotlight Narrative category.

Whigham plays Don, a white-collar criminal who’s just completed a 10-year prison sentence, and when he goes to retrieve a past debt from the mobster (Glenn Fleshler’s Armen) who had a hand in his downfall, he’s instead coerced into killing Armen’s girlfriend and criminal associate, Phyllis (Coon). But Don, being a former insurance adjuster who simply got in over his head, doesn’t have it in him to pull the trigger, and Phyllis, through her power of persuasion, offers Don a chance to get even with Armen. So the unlikely allies take their show on the California road, as they attempt to strike a balance between revenge and redemption, if there is such a thing. And as it turns out, the two outcasts are exactly what each other needed at this crossroads in their lives.

“It’s really satisfying when you see two people serve each other in that capacity and illuminate something so that they can move forward,” Coon says. “Ultimately, it’s about people being able to move on from a place in which they’re stuck, and that’s really hard to do.”

Before they get on the same page, Don pulls his newly acquired gun on Phyllis inside a parking garage, and she quickly gives him the slip by weaponizing her purse. Whigham, as Don, then chases after Coon’s character, and the scene naturally harks back to Whigham’s famous foot pursuits with Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker in Joker (2019) and Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (2023). However, Coon — long before she became an Emmy nominated actor for her Fargo performance as Gloria Burgle — was once a soccer and track star at University of Mount Union in Ohio. (Oddly enough, in Coon’s film Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021), there’s an emotional scene that involves a photo collage, some of which involve her real-life athletic exploits.) All of this is to say that Whigham thinks Coon could give Cruise a serious run for his money if they were to face off in a race.

“Tom [Cruise] is fast, but I don’t know that Tom could outrun Carrie, to be honest with you,” Whigham admits, at the risk of losing annual Cruise Cake privileges.

As far as what’s next for the two in-demand actors, Coon is headed back to Thailand for the umpteenth time to complete her role on The White Lotus season three. She’ll then return to New York for the third season of her other hit HBO series, The Gilded Age. Whigham, who will soon be reuniting with Michael Shannon for the ninth go-round in Death by Lightning, recently wrapped his four-year odyssey in the Mission: Impossible franchise. He filmed the seventh and eighth installments back to back, and despite facing numerous pandemic and strike obstacles along the way, his experience concluded with a scene he asked writer-director Christopher McQuarrie for on the set of 2023’s Dead Reckoning.

“I said to Christopher McQuarrie on [Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning]: ‘I don’t want a bigger trailer. I don’t want more money. I don’t want better catering. I just want one scene between Tom and I, where you, McQ, write it like The Usual Suspects, and we get a chance to get in there.’ And he delivered,” Whigham shares.

And to top it all off, Cruise invited Whigham to dinner after their big scene, and the Mission: Impossible leading man made it known that production is far from over.

“We did this scene between Tom and myself, and then Tom said, ‘We’re going to go out to dinner.’ So we went out to dinner when I was done, and then Tom said, ‘Do you realize that we come out one year from today? And it’s going to be a sprint to finish the fucking thing,’” Whigham recalls. “What he’s doing now, people are going to be floored. He wants to make this one like an adventure film, and he and McQuarrie have an idea of what they want to do with it. So it’s going to be amazing.”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Coon and Whigham discuss the similarities between Lake George and Fargo’s tone, before Coon sets the record straight regarding her fictitious Red Lobster commercial that went viral recently.