Jennifer Coolidge spins roles as trophy wives and divorcees into comic gold.
Now she gets to show what else she can do.
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Here in the dark cocoonof her parlor, Jennifer Coolidge comes alive.
She has been waiting for hours to unveil what she calls the surprise.
Oil portraits in gilded frames stare down from the high walls.
Coolidge believes there is a presence in the house, although not an evil one.
She leads me into a darkened room with heavy drawn curtains and the smell of lilies in the air.
Are you going to kill me?
Yes, she whispers.
She lights the candle, and a wooden box comes into soft focus.
He opens his mouth to reveal a gleaming crescent of white and a slip of pink.
Signor Blitz holds a piece of her soul and, maybe now, mine.
And yet even with just those bit parts, Coolidge has etched herself into the Mt.
Rushmore of millennial camp, breathlessly copied and never quite replicated.
The shortest lines Hior Okay orSo moist are putty in her hands.
She stretches vowels out across entire emotional vistas: plaintive, alien, funny.
(Theyboth love soup.)
InFor Your Consideration,from 2006, Coolidge is a daffy film producer.
She can nail that kind of broad comedy, so of course thats what people want her to do.
People love her, but shes put in a box.
Over a weekend with Coolidge, I learned to embrace unsteadiness.
She can talk, or not talk, for hours.
(She even named her production company after him.)
Sitting on the long velvet couch in her parlor, Coolidge thinks back to her parents.
My father really worshipped my mother, she remembers.
How did she get that?
He really thought she was the most incredible person that ever lived on this planet.
What would you want right now?
What would I want?
she says, laughing.
In a dude or in love?
What would I want?
I have a really good eye for talent.
I dont see you as someone in front of the camera, Coolidge says.
In your headshot, you look just like a young Candice Bergen, she recalls the agent saying.
You look nothing like this.
I only cast good-looking people on my soaps.
There were a lot of lost years when she was deep inside a coke habit.
(What a waste.)
I always said I was Muffin Hemingway if I couldnt get in, she says.
Eventually, too many nights were ending in the ER.
When she was 27, her parents sent her to rehab.
My mothers last words to me were, like, I cant believe it, she remembers.
But she was thrilled because she didnt think anything was going to happen.
There is an always-the-bridesmaid quality to Coolidges career, of sliding doors and missed opportunities.
(SNLdecided against now.)
She says she played a shrink in an HBO pilot that didnt get picked up.
And then two seconds later, its just through, she says, laughing.
Youre like,Oh, really?
Its all over so soon?
EvenThe White Lotus,her richest role to date, is something of a runner-up.
Honestly, its the best thing Ive ever written, White says.
If someone made this show, it would blow peoples minds.
Just think of Jennifer getting bitten by a snake in the Indian Ocean and running for her life.
He says HBO passed.
I got close on a couple places, but the craziness of it was too much, White says.
People were like, Jennifer as the linchpin to a show, as your way in …
I could just sense there was some anxiety.
Jennifer makes the comedy about herself.
The joke is always on her, he says.
She was his nonnegotiable.
The same way people feel about her inLegally Blondeis how I feel about her in life, he says.
I want to see her win.
The day afterI meet Signor Blitz, Coolidge texts me: Hi Alex!!
How are you feeling ?
In the front seat is William, an assistant at CAA whose provenance is a bit of a mystery.
You got me fucked up in the head, boy / Never doubted myself so much, sings Rodrigo.
Its Coolidges first time hearing the song.
I can relate to that, she says.
He remembers her preference for French whites, particularly Saint-Aubins.
Coolidge loves to indulge, to go all out.
She groans, I groan.
Maybe God is gay.
If she were to come back in another life, she would want to be a gay man.
I dont know, she pauses.
I think Id be good at it.
Its impossible to overstate the mutual fixation between Jennifer Coolidge and gay men.
She wonders if this may be because she has acted persecuted, in my own self-centered way.
Whatever role they like, its something where they think Im pretending to be a woman, she says.
That your characters are drag queens?
In some form, she replies.
They said, I realized you were me.
In turn, she projects a certain tenacity and put-togetherness onto gay men that she feels she may lack.
She feels gay men are more generous than their heterosexual counterparts, more even than some women.
Youd think that a gay man would be condescending to me because Im so not what they are.
But I do feel gay men forgive me for it, she says.
Gay men dont make you pay for having a strong point of view.
And I really like that because hetero men dont like that.
Coolidge is single and has never been married.
These themes may or may not be inspired by personal experience.
Either way, Coolidge stays in the game.
Their perception of your life is so much bigger and better than what it really is, she says.
Youre some sort ofverb.
But I dont know how people do it anymore.
Sometimes I feel like you got this good little thing going once in a while with somebody.
You get too much permission to, you know, be you.
The thing dissolves pretty quick.
Theres so many girls who would be like,Well, fuck them.
They cant handle it.But my feeling is, like,Who wants to be alone, too?
My last morningin New Orleans starts with a coffee?
Ill stay across the street so you might really feel the creeps.
Coolidges social anxiety feeds on wondering whether shes doing enough for people or maybe doing too much.
When she hired him to cater a party, she paid him double what hed asked.
Shes very paranoid about hurting anyones feelings, about coming off as mean or entitled, says White.
She did it with the animals, where she would be like, Oh, theres a leopard!
And then shed be like, The leopard is looking at us weird.
The same fears apply to going after roles.
Only when you compare her with other Hollywood actors do disparities in parts or pay start to arise.
So many people are just not making what they should be making.
If youre called a character actress, its just an excuse not to pay you.
COVID got rid of my dream to be isolated.
No more dreams of living in a lighthouse, she says.
I really figured out who I was.
I need city life, city living.
Were there any other moments like that?
She thinks for a second.
I used to be a really, really fast runner, and I just assumed I still was.
And then I did a movie recently,Shotgun Wedding,where you had to run really fast.
Youre screaming, and youre running.
This fantasy I had about myself, I thought I was an Olympic athlete, you know?
Then youre just like,Holy shit, she says.
It was a humbling moment.
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