Carrie Coon Declined ‘Avengers: Endgame’ Over Pay Dispute, Says Husband Tracy Letts

Despite appearing as Proxima Midnight in Avengers: Infinity War, Carrie Coon chose not to return for the sequel after Marvel allegedly refused to offer a pay raise.

Carrie Coon is beloved for her work on HBO series such as The Leftovers, The Gilded Age, and The White Lotus Season 3, but her filmography also includes a quick detour to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Coon portrayed Thanos’ henchman Proxima Midnight via voiceover and motion capture in 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War. She did not return for Avengers: Endgame. Coon’s husband, the actor and playwright Tracy Letts, said on The Big Picture podcast (via People) that money was the reason she dropped Marvel.

“I believe [Marvel] went to her for the second one, and they asked her to be in the second one,” Letts said on the podcast. “And she said, ‘Well, the first one is the most successful movie ever made. Are you going to pay me any more money?’ And they said, ‘No. We’re not going to pay you any more money.’”

“She said, ‘Wow, you’re not going to pay me any more money, then I don’t think I’m going to do it,’” he continued. “And they said, ‘Well, you should feel yourself fortunate to be part of the Marvel Universe.’ So she declined… We would’ve made a bigger deal out of this, but it would have involved us watching the movies and we weren’t going to do that.”

Variety reached out to Marvel for comment.

Infinity War earned more than $2 billion at the worldwide box office after opening in late April 2018 to become the year’s highest-grossing movie. The sequel, Endgame, was even bigger with $2.7 billion worldwide the following year. Letts said on the podcast that he and Coon have still never seen either Marvel movie.

Coon spoke to Entertainment Weekly in 2018 when Infinity War was opening in theaters about joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe, saying: “It started as a voiceover audition. They were just looking for the voice of Proxima Midnight, and [they reached out] perhaps because they were interested in my voice or maybe because I’ve actually done motion-capture work previously. I used to do motion-capture work for video games, back in Madison, Wisconsin. I was an athlete in college, and so it was very physical work that I enjoyed tremendously, and I had such a ball working on it.”

“I’m much older now than I was then, so it was a very different experience,” she continued. “I was also pregnant when I did it. I flew down to Atlanta and did some mo-cap, mostly the facial capture. Of course, I can’t take credit for all of it — it’s a gifted team of animators that are taking on the bulk of that performance. But it morphed from a voiceover job into a mo-cap job, and then suddenly I realized I was in the highest-grossing movie of the year.”

Coon currently stars in The White Lotus Season 3, which wraps its run on April 6. She will be back on HBO later this year for the third season of The Gilded Age.