WASHINGTON (AP) — A key surveillance tool seen as vital in preventing terror attacks and catching foreign spies is set to expire Friday after congressional efforts to temporarily extend it failed in bipartisan fashion.
It’s a significant lapse for the program known as Section 702, and even as President Donald Trump nominates a new national intelligence director more palatable to both Republicans and Democrats than his initial pick, it’s unclear how soon lawmakers — set for recess — would be able to revive the spy program.
Still, there may not be an immediate drop-off given that a court order from March authorized these government surveillance powers to remain in effect for another year.
Section 702 allows for sweeping powers to sift through foreign communications
The provision is a part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, and grants American spy agencies sweeping powers to collect and examine the communications of foreigners located outside the United States without first getting a warrant.
U.S. officials see the law as an invaluable national security tool that has helped disrupt potential acts of terrorism, yielded valuable insight into ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure and contributed to the killing of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri in a 2022 drone strike.
The law was passed in 2008 as an effort to codify key aspects of a predecessor spy program created by President George W. Bush’s Republican administration.
Since then, officials across administrations of both major political parties have warned that without the law the government won’t be able to collect crucial intelligence overseas.
The program’s renewal historically has been contentious
The periodic need to reauthorize the law has prompted protracted debate in Congress well before this year, including discussion over whether additional guardrails are needed to protect the privacy of Americans and their personal data.
That’s because when the government eavesdrops on foreigners abroad, it also sweeps up the communications of American citizens and others in the U.S. who are in contact with those surveillance targets.
Civil liberties advocates have raised concerns over revelations that FBI analysts over the years have improperly queried the vast repository of intelligence collected through the program for information about Americans, including related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters and the racial justice protests of 2020, as well as about state and federal political figures.
Some of those advocates have said the government should be required to have a warrant before examining communications collected from Americans. U.S. officials have said that a warrant would be legally unnecessary and overly cumbersome and that corrective measures have been implemented to reduce the number of improper queries.
Complicating the debate is the unlikely political alliances it has produced, uniting a coalition of lawmakers skeptical of government surveillance that includes both privacy-minded liberal Democrats and Republicans who still regard the intelligence community with suspicion over the investigation of ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 Republican presidential campaign.
The holdup this time is tied to pushback over acting intelligence pick Bill Pulte
Democrats balked when Trump picked Bill Pulte to serve as acting national intelligence director and refused to support a FISA extension until the selection was withdrawn. Pulte, a Trump loyalist with no known national security experience, has set off alarms by using his perch as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency to facilitate dubious mortgage fraud investigations of perceived Trump adversaries.
A House vote this week that would have temporarily extended the program collapsed, with 19 Republicans and nearly all Democrats rejecting the temporary measure, 198-218. A Senate effort to approve its own versions also failed.
After those votes, Trump announced he was tapping Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan who previously served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, as his permanent pick for director of national intelligence, or DNI. The pick was warmly received on Capitol Hill, but it was not enough to break the impasse before Friday’s scheduled expiration.
Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that he has “known and respected” Clayton for decades and that had he been tapped a week ago, “lots of pain might have been avoided.”
“His intelligence, temperament and deep commitment to public service will make him a terrific DNI,” Himes said.
The next steps for the spy powers provision
Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, have warned the Trump administration to prepare “for a potential significant gap in foreign intelligence collection.”
The expiration is likely to be the first meaningful lapse of Section 702 since it was created more than 15 years ago. In 2024, the Senate barely missed its midnight deadline before voting to approve a bill that was then signed by President Joe Biden, a Democrat, creating a brief lapse.
Despite this year’s lapse, there’s no expectation of any immediate drop-off in intelligence collection as the U.S. hosts a series of events this summer with potential national security concerns, including the World Cup and festivities surrounding the 250th birthday of the United States.
A March opinion from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court certified the program’s renewal for another year, meaning that Section 702’s authority is expected to remain intact for months.
Even so, it’s conceivable that without congressional reauthorization, communications companies could try to cease cooperating with the government and stop complying with orders that it assist in intelligence collection.
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Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Lisa Mascaro and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.

Mortgage rates began the day in uneventful fashion with the average lender right in line with yesterday’s latest levels. Things might have gotten off to a slightly better start, but higher inflation in this morning’s econ data and discouraging war-related headlines put upward pressure on bond yields (yields and rates are technically the same thing and they move in the same direction).
The bulk of the day remained uneventful but that changed abruptly at 1:30pm when news circulated that Trump cancelled today’s planned air strikes and said that both sides had approved final details of a permanent ceasefire, and that a time/place of a deal signing would be announced shortly. Markets reacted swiftly with stocks rallying, oil falling, and rates dropping.
Mortgage lenders prefer to set rates only once per day, but they will make mid-day changes if the underlying bond market makes a big enough move. Today’s was easily big enough, and a vast majority of lenders made friendly revisions to their daily rate offerings in short order. The net effect brough the average lender to the lowest levels since last Thursday.

When De’Aaron Fox pulled up at the free-throw line and sank a mid-range jumpshot with 9:40 to go in the third quarter, bringing the San Antonio Spurs’ lead to 29, sending New York Knicks fans into the basketball version of Hell.
Their team looked listless in the first half, falling to a 27-point deficit at halftime. The second half was starting off in much the same fashion and San Antonio’s lead was growing. Madison Square Garden sounded more like a library than the world’s famous arena.
A little more than 85 minutes later, Knicks fans were in the basketball version of heaven. They had just seen something so incredible, so unbelievable, so impossible that they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) leave the World Most Famous Arena. What they had witnessed was the largest comeback in NBA Finals history, quite possibly the greatest comeback in NBA history and an all-time iconic American sports moment.
This is the anatomy of a comeback.
Just after that Fox jumper, the Knicks began chipping away at the Spurs’ massive lead. A 13-0 run in the middle of the third quarter chopped the lead down to 16 with five minutes to go in the third quarter. For the first time all game – the Spurs took the lead early in the first quarter and hadn’t looked back – Madison Square Garden started to make some noise.
The Spurs regained control of the game in the end of the third quarter and the beginning of the fourth, once again stretching the lead to 20 points in the opening stages of the final frame.
And then the big push began.
Down 20 points, Knicks guard Jose Alvarado’s corner 3-pointer hit the rim, rolled around a bit, bounced off the backboard and then fell through the hoop with 9:16 to go. In the next five minutes, the Knicks would bring the Garden to life with a 20-4 run that electrified the celebrity-laden crowd and caused the stands – or at least the press box high up in the rafters – to shake.
That run cut the deficit down to four with a little more than three minutes to go in the game after Alvarado hit another 3. By that time, everyone in the Garden was standing and screaming and the ball going through the hoop was greeted by an absolute explosion of noise.
Fox tried to answer back with a 3-pointer of his own but hit the front of the rim and the ricochet fell out of bounds. Jalen Brunson, the Knicks superstar whose blood appears to run ice cold, brought the ball up the court and calmly decided to shoot from beyond the arc over the 7-foot-4-inch Victor Wembanyama. The ball found the bottom of the net and the deficit was just one point with 2:20 to go.
With the crowd losing its mind, the Spurs collapse appeared to be complete on the next possession. Under pressure, Fox tried to pass the ball to a teammate but instead sent the ball to an unoccupied area of the floor. Knicks star Josh Hart grabbed the ball and sprinted down court, leaping toward a sure basket that would put his team in the lead and bring the house down.
Instead, Hart got caught between a layup and a dunk. That last-minute indecision led to an inexplicable brick, the ball sailing off Hart’s fingertips and off the back of the iron, bouncing harmlessly back into Fox’s hands.
The Garden crowd was stunned and then Hart made his mistake even worse, fouling Wembanyama as the French phenom drove toward the Knicks’ basket and giving him two shots from the free-throw line. It appeared, with 1:47 to go, that the comeback for the ages was about to fall agonizingly short.
And then Wemby, all of 22 years old and carrying the weight of the future of the league on his shoulders, faltered. As the crowd rained down jeers, he missed both free throws and the Knicks had a lifeline.
Brunson took the ball back up the court and drove to his left against Stephon Castle, the Spurs defender who has hassled him all series. With a left-hand floater from the paint, the diminutive guard out of Villanova gave the Knicks their first lead since 11:21 of the first quarter. It was now 105-104 with 1:22 to go in the game.
The noise in the Garden was now basically a bewildered jet engine, a roar that was tinged with disbelief. It was the kind of noise where tens of thousands of people are all witnessing the same thing but none of them can quite believe what they’re watching. Thousands of people jumping, screaming, hugging – and still the Spurs controlled their own destiny.
But they seemed intent on giving it away.
The Spurs swung the ball around to Castle, who couldn’t catch the pass cleanly on the far sideline and decided to drive toward the baseline. His out-of-control drive ended with him stepping on the out-of-bounds line, yet another turnover that gave the Knicks the chance to kill the game.
They weren’t able to do it, failing to get a shot off before the shot clock expired and opening the door – once again – to the Spurs. Hart lost track of Castle, who charged toward the rim to grab the rebound off Fox’s missed jump shot. The dreadlocked Spurs star jumped toward the loose ball and all Hart could do was foul.
Clutch Castle made both off his high-pressure shots from the charity stripe, giving the Spurs a one-point lead with 30 seconds to go. It was plenty of time for the Knicks to run their offense and go back to their star, Brunson.
He couldn’t convert. After several passes on the edge of the 3-point line, trying to find an opening, Brunson took the ball and charged toward the paint only to find the massive Wembanyama waiting for him. He tried to find a way pass the Defensive Player of the Year, and missed.
The rebound bounced off Hart’s hands, off a couple Spurs and was deflected down the court. Fox raced ahead of OG Anunoby, collected the ball with 13 seconds left in regulation and appeared set to be able to kill off the clock. Instead, Anunoby was about to write himself into NBA history – with a little help from Fox’s poor decision making.
Instead of dribbling the ball out and killing more time, Fox went straight for the hoop and attempted a layup. Anunoby caught up to him, timed his jump perfectly and got his hand on the ball, sending it directly to Alvarado with nine seconds left. The Puerto Rican raced up the court and drew a foul at half-court with 5.7 seconds to play. The Knicks called a timeout to talk things over, down by one.
Anunoby inbounded the ball from in front of the scorer’s table, with no one from the Spurs guarding him, finding Brunson. With Wembanyama in his face, Brunson fired up a 3-pointer from over 30 feet, hitting the front of the rim.
Charging from the 3-point line toward the arcing rebound was Anunoby, taking one step in the paint and then leaping above Spurs rookie Dylan Harper and Devin Vassell to get a hand on the ball as it hung in the air.
It floated … and hit the back of the iron, dropping through the net with 1.2 seconds left. Bedlam gripped the Garden as Knicks fans lost their minds, a massive delirium gripping the arena, the city, the Tri-State Area and – if we’re being honest – basketball fans all around the world.
The Spurs still had time to run one more play. It was Harper inbounding the ball right next to a dancing group consisting of Taylor Swift, the Haim sisters and actress Mariska Hargitay (a truly unbelievable sequence of words). The massive Karl-Anthony Towns stood in front of Harper, who lobbed a pass in the direction of Castle, who was open.
But the ball had been tipped by Towns just enough to take the speed off the ball and it fluttered short of Castle, allowing Hart and Mitchell Robinson to close in on the Spurs player. Castle came up with the ball but could not get a shot off and the clock expired with the ball ending up in Hart’s hands as the buzzer sounded.
What followed was 50-some-odd years of demons being exorcised in Madison Square Garden. Fans screamed, hugged, stared around them in astonishment at what they had just witnessed. Towns screamed as he hugged teammates, seemingly on the verge of tears.
The greatest comeback in the history of the NBA Finals was over. Just one game now separates them from a title.

After hearing The Gilded Age‘s Carrie Coon talk about the doors that remain closed to her, Love Story breakout Sarah Pidgeon asks whether anybody gathered for THR‘s annual Drama Actresses Emmy Roundtable ever feels like they’ve truly made it. The answer? A unanimous “no,” with the subtle implication that anyone who says otherwise may be delusional. “The vast majority of us are just working,” says Claire Danes (The Beast in Me). Climbing to another rung of the endless Hollywood ladder was something all six women — including Chase Infiniti (The Testaments), Rhea Seehorn (Pluribus) and Kerry Washington (Imperfect Women) — could relate to when they convened at The Georgian Hotel on a late April afternoon and covered everything from red carpet insecurities to becoming a 420 meme.
Chase endured a six-month audition for One Battle After Another. What is the hardest any of you have worked to get a job, whether you booked it or not?
CLAIRE DANES Well, there’s a Leo [DiCaprio] connection. I auditioned many times for Romeo + Juliet.
CARRIE COON Who else would have done it?
KERRY WASHINGTON Nobody!
DANES There was a protracted waiting period before I heard that I did get the job, and my mouth was full of canker sores. I couldn’t talk because I was so stressed from the anticipation.
WASHINGTON Our bodies, they speak to us.
RHEA SEEHORN On Better Call Saul, there was a long period before I found out I got it, and I thought, “I guess I didn’t.” I had tried to do my best to let it go, but secretly, I had not let it go. My agent called me while I was walking in Venice, and I lost it.
WASHINGTON Were you by yourself?
SEEHORN No, I was with my partner, Graham, and my agent goes, “It’s not public yet, so you can’t tell anyone. Also, when they [announce,] it’s going to be a different name. Just go along with that.” Obviously she meant character name. I thought they meant I needed to change my name. “What’s my name?” And she was like, “Beth.” OK, I’ll be Beth. Graham says, “You’re not changing your name.” I was like, “You don’t understand show business, shut up!” [Laughter.] It took me a full 48 hours to find out that I didn’t need to change my own name.
SARAH PIDGEON I feel like if I’m not getting something, I usually find out pretty quickly. I haven’t had a six-month audition process. What do you even do for six months?
CHASE INFINITI At first [we’d meet] once a month. Then it started to be once a week, and I’m going for movement auditions, karate or just more chemistry reads with Leo and Regina [Hall].
WASHINGTON I had a really long process for Scandal. I was at a place in my career where they thought it would be respectful if I met with Shonda [Rhimes] first. So we met, but then I had to read as well. I had maybe four or five auditions until the screen test. Part of why it took so long was because, when Scandal aired, it had been almost 40 years since a Black woman had led a network drama. Everybody wanted to audition. And God bless Shonda, she was like, “Then everyone will audition.” Some of those roles, they live in you and you want them so badly. But other girls feel that way, too.
SEEHORN Exactly.
WASHINGTON There’s somebody who knows that this is hers, too.
COON When I was auditioning for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in Chicago, all the women who were called back, we all went out to lunch. That’s just the community it was, super supportive. In Chicago, nobody was getting famous. I haven’t had that experience in TV and film. I’m always getting called in at the last minute because they need somebody to fill in something. I wasn’t actually in the first round of consideration because my career started later.
DANES When I was a kid, literally Rollerblading from audition to audition, there was always the same pool [of actresses]. We were kind of pals. It felt reassuring.
WASHINGTON So much bonding happened in those waiting rooms.
COON And I miss that. I miss the power of the casting director because now it’s a tape farm.
And these women — I mean, there were men, too, but in my life, it was all women — I wouldn’t have a career without casting directors advocating for me. My getting cast in Gone Girl was a tape I made in Chicago. I was like, “No one’s going to watch this tape.” And she watched that tape.
Claire, a critic recently referred to you — and this was in a very positive piece — as our cultural avatar for anxiety, given the throughline of My So-Called Life, Homeland, Fleishman Is in Trouble and The Beast in Me. What do you think of that take?
DANES I do think that we’re living in a kind of acutely anxious time. … Somebody told my husband that every time you play a role, you want it to be a human just up a tree with wolves barking at them — an everyday person in an extraordinary circumstance. Maybe anxiety is a part of that.
SEEHORN The very few times where I have been asked to play “the girlfriend of someone interesting, but you’re not interesting” … playing just utter peace and contentment is super hard. Just doing nothing, it sucks. I used to get a lot of notes from the director: “So there’s this thing you’re doing which is making me wonder about the character. Can you not do that?”
WASHINGTON Could you just be an accessory?
COON Change your dress so it matches the drapes.
SEEHORN It bugs me when there will be a male and female actor in something and they’re both brilliant and they will use subjective personality descriptions for the female’s performance. Like, “She’s just effervescent. She’s quirky!” And then the males will be craft-based compliments of their actual talents.
PIDGEON Do you think it’s changed?
SEEHORN It has changed some, yeah.
DANES But there’s also, “She’s really attractive. Don’t worry. She’s cute.”
Kerry, I read that earlier in your career, you adopted a persona that you called “Red Carpet Kerry” to help you lean into the more public-facing aspects of the job. What led you to that decision?
INFINITI Red Carpet Kerry?
SEEHORN I need that.
WASHINGTON It came about because there was a particular project that I was auditioning for — one of those, “I want this so badly; it lives inside me” roles. And, in the end, it wound up going to another actress. When I was talking about it with my team and other people that I respect in the business, there was an idea that [the actress who booked it] was more of an “It” girl. She was utilizing her personal marketing in a way that gave her more leverage. I didn’t want to prioritize marketing over craft, but I started asking myself if I was hiding and if I needed to challenge myself to step forward into hair and makeup and fashion in a different way where I could still feel true to myself. I would be in these situations on a carpet and feel terrified of it. I just thought, “OK, there has to be some other version of me. Still me but a version of myself that wasn’t entirely vulnerable and naked, that I could step into and show up in a different way.”
SEEHORN I’m always happy to be invited to the prom but terrified while I’m out there doing it.
DANES You know what I do? And then I discovered that Robert De Niro does this, too, because he makes fun of me all the time. I hum.
COON You make sounds?
WASHINGTON Oh, and you smile.
DANES I was going to say disassociate, but that’s a nicer way of saying it.
WASHINGTON So much of this work we do is about being willing to reveal ourselves. I was like, “If I’m scared to be pretty, if I’m scared of people looking at me, that could impact my work.” So it just became an exercise of like, “How do I play?”
PIDGEON I had a similar conversation with my agent when I was in my first junket. I was so nervous. She told me, “You look at all of these amazing actors and they have this red carpet personality. It’s an extension of themselves.” But I struggle with this understanding that I’m perceived. I want to be able to get lost in a role and transform, but part of this industry, especially today, is about presenting yourself.
WASHINGTON You as a brand.
PIDGEON I’m still figuring out what that line is that I want to walk where I don’t want to be crippled with anxiousness or fear of having to be public in these settings, but also not hiding.
WASHINGTON Glenn Close has this way of thinking about it that I love. She thinks about being a kind queen and sort of coming out on the carpet. All of these people, they’re part of your court. They don’t have the power. You have the power, and you show up with an elegance, generosity and graciousness, but you still hold what’s yours.
DANES Or you could hum. (Laughter.)
Speaking to that divide between reality and perception, Sarah, you were playing this enigmatic woman whom the culture has fetishized but knew little to nothing about. And as you were filming it, the paparazzi were hounding you the way that they hounded Carolyn Bessette. When was that overwhelming and how did you cope with it?
PIDGEON So much of this experience was new for me. I certainly had yet to be on a set before this where there was so much interest from the public. But I think there wasn’t a moment that was lost on me that this was so similar to an experience that Carolyn would have felt. That helped me feel a bit more control over it, of understanding that I was having a physiological response that she would have had. There’s a kinship in that. The moments where I was able to recognize that there was a shared experience with Carolyn made me feel like I could embody her a little bit more.
DANES What was the raw material you used for Carolyn?
PIDGEON There are a lot of photographs of Carolyn, but so much of it is after she gained public recognition. You hold yourself in a very different way, as I’m sure you all know, when someone’s taking your photo [versus] you’re trying to go to the grocery store. And there were far less candid photos that her friends took. There was some videography, very little in terms of her vocal expression. I would curse, like, “Why can’t I just have two and a half minutes of her candidly speaking?”
DANES I remember her. I knew her.
PIDGEON I had no idea.
DANES Narciso Rodriguez is a good friend of mine, and I met her through him a number of times. I remember her pretty vividly. You did a great job.
PIDGEON Thank you. That means a lot to me.
Chase, you’ve been on a rocket ship essentially since August. What do you wish you knew a year ago that you learned on your own throughout this?
INFINITI Probably to pace myself. Before starting the One Battle press, Paul [Thomas Anderson] and Leo had told me, “Just so you know, this is a marathon. You’ve got to make sure that you energetically pace yourself.” “Yeah, sure. I get it. Makes sense.” Then we actually started the junket days and the traveling, and I was like, “Oh, this is really exhausting in a way that I’d never experienced before.” Granted, I had no idea what an awards season would look like. I had never promoted anything.
DANES In some ways, they’re more exhausting than the work itself, which kind of feeds you.
SEEHORN It’s figuring out who your authentic self is in that. But if your authentic self doesn’t feel like doing the 53rd interview, your authentic self needs to get the eff off.
Rhea and Carrie, you’ve both recently had major profile boosts after years of working. When that happens, is there a part of you that’s like, “Where the hell have you all been?”
COON That part, the public discourse about you and your life, has always felt so far from me. Don’t get me wrong, I read reviews. I’ll haunt Reddit. I want to know how the work is landing in the world. It’s important to take in the good and the bad because then you know that it’s all subjective and actually has nothing to do with you. So, the slow and steady rise of Carrie Coon has happened entirely outside of my life — even now after The White Lotus. I was at a restaurant last night in Newport, and this sweet young thing who was serving me said, “Do you play guitar?” I’m still moving through the world with people vaguely kind of maybe thinking they know me from their high school. It’s great, and I don’t want to change that. As far as what The White Lotus does for careers, there were a lot of think pieces written about the show and the women. Maybe people started watching The Gilded Age. I haven’t seen the material results of that yet.
DANES But you always fly off the screen. It happens every time.
COON And I’ll do it as long as they let me. When they’re done with me, I’ll do something else.
SEEHORN You did a great interview where you said that it’s very helpful, career-wise, to have access to more material but you’re just on a new list. You were like, “I’m still on a list of many people that are ahead of me to get offers.”
COON I think I’m like top of the B-list now. Instead of the seventh person you come to, I’m like the fourth.
DANES Eye roll.
COON Here’s the thing: I still have to fight. I’m going to have to fight for big movies. What am I getting? I’m getting unfinanced indie scripts. That’s what I’m getting. And it’s probable that, if The Gilded Age were to go away, I would get another television job. For me, I haven’t leveled up in the way that you think of when you think of [to Infiniti] what you’re going through or [to Pidgeon] what you’re about to go through.
PIDGEON Do you think anyone ever feels like they’ve [made it]?
DANES A very, very, very, very, very, very, very few. The vast majority of us are just working.
WASHINGTON We all know we’re on a list. We’re either on a list or we’ve got to be the ones creating the project. For me, that’s why producing has become such a huge part of what I do. I cannot spend my life sitting at home waiting to be invited to the party. I have got to start throwing these parties. Not that that’s easy, but we’re all dealing with the “list” thing. By the way, the lists level up. First you’re just happy that anybody notices …
COON “I’m on the list!”
WASHINGTON There are bigger lists. Dreams get bigger. We get curious about other things.
Claire, you played Beth in 1994’s Little Women. I hear you were told at the time that you had to reshoot her death scene because someone had spilled a Coca-Cola on the reel. But you recently found out that that was not the case, correct?
DANES Like last year. [At the time,] Gillian Armstrong, the director, told me that Coke spilled on the negatives, so I was like, “Sure!” I had no idea what any of that meant. Of course, now I realize. So, I was dying and was really excited about it. [Laughter.] I had a death rattle that I had researched, and it just got a little too guttural, I think. I really committed. It was maybe too authentic, let’s call it that, as opposed to clownish, but yeah.
SEEHORN Oh, the reshoot was to change your performance?
DANES We redid it, and it was slightly more muted.
COON The Hollywood version.
DANES I told Matthew Rhys that story when we were filming [The Beast in Me], and then he started calling me “Death Rattle Danes,” which has stuck.
For those of you who watch your own work, is there a scene where you’ve thought, “Oh, I really wish I could redo that?”
COON Well, I’m afraid I just shot it a couple days ago. I was like, “It’s time for me to quit the business, yeah?” Everyone was like, “Probably.”
SEEHORN You got to watch something you shot?
COON No, no, I was doing it.
DANES Did you have a morning-after, “Oh, I figured it out?”
COON Oh no. It was happening in the moment. The director and I were just like, “Nope!”
DANES There’s always at least one scene on a project where I come home and am devastated. I’m horrified by my limitations. Horrified. I’m in tears with my husband. It’s predictable at this point.
WASHINGTON When you watch it, do you ever feel like, “Oh, it actually should have been that?” Or do you feel like it should have been the thing that you imagined in your head? Sometimes I feel like I want it to be something and then it turns out to be something else.
SEEHORN (To Infiniti and Pidgeon) Do you guys watch your work?
INFINITI Yeah, I do. I find it to be fun. The first time you watch it, after the first 20 minutes, you have that buffer of like, “OK, now I know that’s me. Let’s get into it.” Then I can watch it without thinking back to what I did and where I was on the day and being like, “I wish I did this or that.”
PIDGEON I don’t think I particularly enjoy the experience of watching myself. I feel like I remember each take that I do, and I know the takes that I have when I think, “They’d better not use that.”
WASHINGTON Do you ever communicate with the script supervisor or the director about the takes you like or don’t like? You can.
PIDGEON No. All the takes that I don’t like, they always end up in the show.
WASHINGTON Oh, then maybe you shouldn’t talk to them. [Laughter.] What’s in the show is amazing, so maybe stay out of it.
SEEHORN I excruciatingly watch my own work to learn from it.
COON You’ve got to know your bad habits so you can make a choice.
PIDGEON (To Infiniti) Did you find a difference between how you were able to take up space on One Battle versus The Testaments? You were working with such huge names. Did you feel different in how you approached the work or how you felt on set?
INFINITI I think it was more how I felt on set as opposed to the work. With One Battle and then Presumed Innocent, I was the youngest person on set. So when I got to do The Testaments, I was like the big kid. There’s a bunch of younger girls who are on that show. Coming from One Battle, I could piecemeal stuff that Leo taught me, that Paul taught me. Regina, Teyana [Taylor], everybody on that set taught me, even the whole crew. Because I would always ask every single question that I could. The one thing that everybody across the board has taught me is to be there for everybody, be a listening ear. I really wanted to make myself available to all of the other girls [on Testaments] because, for some of them, this is the biggest part that they’ve had or the most lines that they’ve had. I just wanted to make sure that I could be there to support them in the same ways that everybody had supported me. A lot of that was me being like, “If you ever need anything, I’m here to listen. If it’s something in the scene, I’m here to help you. If you need somebody to confide in after a take or if you just want to have a laugh, I will be that for you.” It’s scary to take up space in something when you’re new at it.
DANES Did they take you up on that?
INFINITI They did, and it was something that I found to be so special. I never worked with a group of girls before, and it was amazing.
COON That’s very impressive that that’s what you took away from your experiences. Not all young people would take that lesson from that experience.
What are some memorable exchanges you’ve had with fans?
COON On [the NBC comedy] Whitney, I played Roxanne. There were constant jokes that she was drinking. Her Sprite can was vodka. It’s a sitcom. It didn’t go super dark about it, but it was definitely a thing. I had been given fan mail that was sent to my agent, and I was like, “I’ll just read one or two for fun.” Bad idea. A woman had sent me multiple pamphlets from AA, legitimately believed that this character is real and is an alcoholic and needed help. But it also came with pictures of her. She’s a soccer mom. She has a job. I was like, “How is this person functioning in the real world if she believes people in the TV are real?” There was a long letter about how she wanted to help me.
WASHINGTON God bless her.
DANES Most of the time, people are really nice. I remember my son, who was like 4, said, “Why do people always say, ‘I like your work?’ ” That’s mostly what people say, and I’ve played some extra characters, right? I thought that might attract some colorful comments and attachments. I have met people who are bipolar, and they found some company in what I was doing as Carrie Mathison [on Homeland]. That’s very moving.
Looking at the body of your work and your public appearances, what is your favorite meme of yourself?
COON Me sprinting away from the gunshots in The White Lotus. I’m deeply gratified when my physical life is lauded, because I was an athlete. I love physical stuff on set. I love hanging out of a window. I love running. I also just felt like, yeah, that’s a very American response. You hear a gunshot, you’re out of there. That felt very real to me. There’s also my really ugly cry face. [To Danes] I know you and I both share that. The cry faces, we have that. And I will say, too, for fans, it’s always The Leftovers fans that recognize me. I always hear about people’s grief. It’s very moving. There’s such deep sharing that happens and it’s not trite, and I’m very grateful for it.
PIDGEON There are some from The Wilds. I’m covered in blood and dirt and kind of losing it, pacing back and forth. There are a few frames of me looking pretty rundown and crazy.
COON Good for the group chat.
INFINITI I make a face of disgust during the DNA test in One Battle. My friends love to use that one.
WASHINGTON My character from Little Fires Everywhere, there’s a scene where I’m smoking a joint. People love to send me that on 4/20.
INFINITI Happy belated!
SEEHORN I’m so deeply terrified about what is going to be said about me online, even though I can’t escape it. My friends will send them to me if they’re particularly unattractive. Apparently my listening face, when I believe the other person is an idiot, is very useful to a lot of people. There are quite a few of them.