On the evening of Sunday, February 16, US time, fans of The White Lotus gathered around their TV sets, eagerly awaiting the first episode of the third season to drop. Jennifer Coolidge was amongst that number, having invited some friends over to her New Orleans home to watch the water-cooler show together.
Currently enjoying a massive career resurgence thanks to the scene-stealing character of Tanya in the first two seasons of the series, Jennifer couldn’t wait to see what happened next. And — massive spoiler alert — when the character of Tanya’s dodgy husband, Greg (Jon Gries), made an unexpected appearance, her living room went wild.
“Everyone was screaming,” she tells The Weekly over the phone of the plot twist that has the White Lotus fan base talking. “It was so smart of [creator] Mike White to put him in. I didn’t get a copy [ahead of time], so I don’t know anything that’s going on. I’m seeing all of this in the moment.
“I really hope that Belinda [Natasha Rothwell] is going to do Tanya right and take out Greg or do whatever she has to do. He deserves something terrible. He deserves a death worse than mine.”
Jennifer has enjoyed a decades-long career, creating plenty of memorable characters along the way.
White Lotus has elevated her to a new realm of success in her sixties that she’d almost given up on happening at any age.
“It’s opened up everything for me career-wise,” she admits. “Some really cool things have come my way, now it’s just figuring out and deciding what could happen.”
One of those things is the upcoming live-action film A Minecraft Movie. The movie, which was produced by and stars Jason Momoa, was shot in New Zealand. Which was a definite bonus for Jennifer when she was approached about taking part.
“I didn’t expect Jason to be so friendly because he’s such a superstar,” she says with genuine surprise at her expectations going into the film, which also stars Jack Black. “He can’t walk down the street in a lot of places. But he was incredibly down-to-earth and kind.”
Jennifer adds, “he took us all out for dinner and then took us to another place that was filled with all sorts of boats and other recreational stuff.”
“He has all these cool jobs that he does, and then he is down in one of the most beautiful places in the world. He has an unbelievable amount of energy. He’s got planes and trains and automobiles he glides around in. He’s a great example of someone who is living the life.”
Certainly, Jennifer is enjoying this time in her own life. But, only a few years earlier, she says, she’d “almost written myself off”.
Her start in LA improv group The Groundlings in the early ’90s helped her land her first job — a guest role in Seinfeld as one of Jerry’s girlfriends.
“I had all these incredibly obscene ideas, this obscene relationship with reality where my thoughts were very ambitious,” she says now of what she thought would happen next in her trajectory.
She continues, “I thought I was going to be queen of a country. I can’t begin to tell you how big the movies I thought I would have leads in were. Just all these overly-confident thoughts. I didn’t want to do anything small. I wanted to be huge.
“But then you go on a decade, and you get a few decent jobs — in a row, I had American Pie [1999] and Legally Blonde [2001]. Then I went through the next few decades that weren’t so exciting. And you start to believe it’s impossible to get back to those sort of euphoric, life-changing jobs … So what a gift to have that now.”
With that gift has come a new level of recognition — not just in the industry but with the viewing public.
While she jokes that she’s not the most put-together of people — often ducking out for her morning coffee, make-up free and with her nightgown underneath a hastily thrown-on coat — to have fans approach her for conversation is a gift in more ways than one.
“You can’t be a wallflower when you’re out in the world,” she explains. “People recognise you and you’re forced to interact, and I think that’s kind of healthy. Because I lock myself up in my house sometimes for days at a time, just with the dogs.
“I think we need interaction to keep us normal, otherwise you could turn into a freak. You end up getting too big a dose of yourself and that’s deadly — I don’t want a big dose of myself!
“When you’re alone, it’s a limited thing and I don’t think it brings out the joy you can get in this lifetime. It’s really good to interact with the world.”
She loves it, she tells us, when young girls approach her with excitement and questions when she’s out and about. And recently, she laughs, she also thought she might have finally met the man of her dreams.
Preparing to board a plane, she recalls now, the most handsome man she’d ever seen in her life stopped her and eagerly asked, “Are you Jennifer Coolidge?” before requesting a photograph with her.
“He looked like one of that family of movie-star brothers, the Hemsworths,” she recounts, “but a Hemsworth on steroids. And just for a second, I thought, ‘Maybe my lucky moment has actually arrived. This guy is a weirdo, and maybe he likes that weird character I played in a movie, and maybe he likes weird.’
“It was such an exciting moment and then he was like, ‘My wife’s going to love this’ and I just did a nosedive after that.”
It’s these kinds of stories, though, she tells us, that her friends love to hear the most when they catch up. And while she may be single, she’s certainly not lonely at this time of her life thanks to an incredible group of friends who inspire and uplift her.
One of those is Australian actress Naomi Watts. The pair met on the set of the 2022 Netflix horror series The Watcher and formed a fast bond.
“She’s the girl that did everything right,” says Jennifer of their friendship. “She’s like my polar opposite in a way. But you can’t not like Naomi Watts; she’s extremely generous. And she never looks weary – she’s not ageing at all! I was just fascinated by her.
“And now she’s got this handsome new husband [Billy Crudup]. What a beautiful couple. I love it when two superstar actors come together and then they fall in love.”
There’s a definite Antipodean theme to our chat — from the Hemsworths to Naomi. And it’s not surprising to hear that Jennifer is a fan of not just New Zealand but also Australia. She visited here for the Vivid Sydney festival back in 2023.
Having travelled with White Lotus creator and good friend Mike, she’d had an amazing trip, finding Aussies a “friendly bunch”. The duo, she says, are great travel buddies. Although Mike, who has competed on both Survivor and The Amazing Race, and she have very different needs when it comes to their accommodation.
“I don’t love roughing it the way that Mike does,” she laughs. “I don’t know if I’m your favourite person to bring camping; to sleep with bugs and have limited water. Maybe check me into The White Lotus instead.”
This article originally appeared in the April 2024 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Pick up the latest issue at your local newsagents or subscribe so you never miss one!
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