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Jennifer Coolidge thought “we were all going to die” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jennifer Coolidge thought we were all going to die during the COVID-19 pandemic
The 61-year-old actress was hesitant about accepting her award-winning role as Tanya McQuoid on Mike White’s ‘The White Lotus’ because she wasn’t bikini-ready after spending months indulging during lockdown because she never expected to live to see the end of the global health crisis.
Speaking during The Hollywood Reporter’s Drama Actress roundtable, she said: “Mike White and I were going to do another show, which had been turned down by a lot of people, and he mentioned he was going to write [his next] show about rich people on vacation, but I never heard anything more about it.
“Then we were like six months into COVID, and I’d been locked up in my house in New Orleans just pigging out on these vegan pizzas.
“A good friend and I were doing two at breakfast, two at lunch and two at dinner. We were in COVID, no one knew I’d be getting a call going, ‘Hey Jennifer, my show got greenlit, let’s go do it. And it’s all going to be on a beach in bathing suits!’
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“So, I was just like, ‘No, I’m not doing this,’ but I didn’t tell Mike I wasn’t doing it. I just said, ‘Oh, that’s so nice, Mike. God, congratulations.’
“I thought we were all going to die during COVID, so I was just like do whatever you want.
“Walk around naked, get arrested, whatever, it’s all going to be over.”
The ’Watcher’ star went on to add that she was still confident she was not going to take on the role of the socialite in the HBO series until a girlfriend talked her into it and admitted it was only ever “self-hatred” that stopped her in the first place.
She said: “But then it started to become a real thing, and I was hearing from business people. And then [I hear] that little ping in my bedroom in New Orleans at like 2 am and I look down at my phone and it said, ‘Are you afraid? ‘It was from Mike. He knew.
“But I still wasn’t going to do it, and I think this happens to actresses a lot. You sit around and b**** your whole life that you’ve never been given the role of your dreams, and then when it comes, you’re like, ‘Yeah, I can’t do it. I ate a bunch of pizza.’ You can ruin it.
“And thank God I have a bestie that just caught on to my bull****. She knew exactly what I was doing, and she was like, ‘You are an idiot. I’m not going to let you do this!’ , they have Sydney Sweeney and Alexandra Daddario to wear those bathing suits, I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t know, it was self-hate and not being prepared.”
