You won’t hear Netflix say it, so I will: Carrie Coon deserves her first Oscar nomination for His Three Daughters.
This new family drama began streaming on Netflix today with almost no fanfare for advertising, despite the fact that the streamer shelled out nearly $7 million to acquire the film after it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last fall. But though the marketing and press has been nearly non-existent, this moving portrait of anticipatory grief is still worth your time for the three powerhouse lead performances—most especially from Coon.
Written, directed, and edited by Azazel Jacobs (French Exit, The Lovers), His Three Daughters stars Coon, Elizabeth Olsen, and Natasha Lyonne as three estranged sisters who are brought back together by their dying father. Coon plays Katie, the fierce, no-nonsense eldest daughter; Olsen plays Christina, a sweet, conflict-avoidant new mother; and Lyonne plays Rachel, a chill, butch stoner who lives with their father. Katie and Christina temporarily move back in with Rachel, to their childhood apartment, while their father receives at-home, end-of-life, hospice care. The sisters are told by their nurse it’s likely a matter of days. But that’s plenty of time for old wounds to be clawed open.
As Katie, Coon is concise, cutting, and cold. The film’s opening scene finds her delivering a monologue, in which she asks—no, demands—that her sisters handle disagreements “like adults, like the age we are.” Her stern gaze is punctuated by hunched shoulders and crossed arms. She’s quite literally closing herself off. In the hands of a less capable actress, perhaps Katie would come off as uncaring. But Coon lets you see the pain in her eyes, and, immediately, you understand Katie’s anger is born from fear. She holds herself defensively, because she is trying to protect herself from the pain of losing her father with pragmatism.
But, of course, there’s no avoiding the pain. Katie’s grief-driven anger simmers, bubbles, and boils over again and again, and she redirects most of it toward her sister, Rachel (Lyonne). Rachel fails to buy proper groceries, Rachel smokes inside, Rachel refuses to sit with their father. The complaints are endless, and the judgment is constant. Coon delivers it all with relentless ferocity—though, again, always letting the audience see her character’s vulnerability, hovering just beneath the surface.
In one particularly striking scene, Coon stomps away from a disappointing meeting with her father’s nurse to tear into her sister for smoking in the bathroom. She spits out a mile-a-minute tirade without missing a beat, and though Jacobs keeps the camera only on Lyonne’s face, Coon commands the scene. Katie is insufferable in this moment—and so very real.
Coon has been dominating screens as formidable women since her critically acclaimed supporting role in Gone Girl, and it’s past time that the Academy recognize her talents with an Oscar nomination. (Sidebar, but can you believe she never won an Emmy for The Leftovers? She was never even nominated for that role! That’s a travesty, and we must do better by this queen.) In 2020, there were some murmurs of an Oscar nomination for her commanding performance in The Nest—where she played the wife of a wealthy 1980s husband (Jude Law) who drives his family to financial ruin—but that sadly never came to fruition.
But with the 2025 Oscar race wide open, there’s still time to get on board the Coon train for Best Supporting Actress (which, it appears, she will be submitted for, rather than for Best Actress). Let’s make this happen, people. It’s Carrie Coon’s time to shine.
