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Jennifer Coolidge: the actress of ‘The White Lotus’ who stole comedies is finally a star

The winner of the Golden Globe and the Emmy for ‘The White Lotus’ has just released ‘An Explosive Wedding’ on Amazon Prime Video, with Jennifer Lopez: a small role in the style of its beginnings, but from a new status of respect

    “No one ever invited me to a single party, and now the whole world is inviting me!” was one of the stellar phrases of Jennifer Coolidge’s iconic speech at the Golden Globes after winning, last January, with the prize for Best Supporting Actress for the role of Tanya McQuoid in the HBO Max miniseries ‘The White Lotus’ (2021-). A recognition that he took advantage of to review on stage his trajectory, marked by persistence, good humor, underestimation and, opposed to the latter the key support of various friends They always believed in her.

    At 61, Coolidge has risen by surprise to celebrity status unusual, when it already seemed destined simply for remembered her as “Stifler’s mother” in ‘American Pie’ (1999), nothing more and nothing less than the unfortunate figure on whom the acronym ‘MILF’ crystallized in popular culture (in the Spanish dubbing of the film, ‘MQMF’, ‘Mother who would fuck me’).

    Just like in that movie he was only 15 years older than Seann William Scott, the actor who played Stifler, an also absurd age gap separates Coolidge from Josh Duhamel, his son in ‘An Explosive Wedding’: 11 years gets along with the co-star of this romantic action comedy headed by Jennifer Lopez, who just launched Amazon Prime Video. Because there are things that never change, although things have undoubtedly changed a lot for Coolidge. a single second in the trailer holding (and firing) a machine gun was enough for him to become the gif of the moment on social networks —in hard conflict with his other meme from ‘The White Lotus’: the scene in which Tanya asks for help exclaiming “These gays! They are trying to kill me!”— and briefly eclipse the almighty JLo as the production’s claim.

    jennifer coolidge in american pie and today

    yours is a paradigmatic case of machismo in the film industry, the same one that has kept the doors more ajar than ajar for three decades. According to the journalist Hannah Jane Parkinson In a profile in The Guardian, in its initial stage in Los Angeles a casting agent recommended the actress throw in the towel for not being “pretty enough” to go on camera. Since it debuted in 1993 in an episode of ‘Seinfeld’ (where she played a masseuse that Jerry Seinfeld started dating for free massages), the actress built herself, against all odds, a career based on getting oil from small comedy roles, even at the risk of being pigeonholed or having to represent sexist stereotypes.

    In some cases, a few minutes on screen were enough to turn tangential plot characters into emblematic ones. An obvious example is his Paulette Bonafonté from ‘Legally Blonde’ (2001), the manicurist to whom Reese Witherspoon taught the “duck and puff” move. “Many gay men send me photos on Halloween dressed as Paulette,” he celebrated at a interview in Vogue in 2022. Also the Hilary Duff’s wicked stepmother in ‘A Modern Cinderella’ (2004). Or, of course, Stifler’s mother in ‘American Pie’, the comedy that marked your adolescence, which she played in four films. Although she thinks there were five, judging by her gratitude at the Golden Globes to those responsible for the franchise for giving her work those years: “I’m willing to do a sixth or seventh part, whatever they want.”

    rarity is a gift

    Writer-director Mike White created ‘The White Lotus’ in the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, at the request of HBO, which sought to develop a production that was set only on one stage in order to adjust to the complexity of the health situation. to embody Tanya McQuoid, a depressed billionaire woman in the midst of an existential crisis after the recent death of her mother, White only had one person in mind: Jennifer Coolidge, close friend since they both met in the comedy ‘Gentlemen Broncos’ (2009). According to the Boston-born actress told Jimmy Kimmel, the two shared a trip together to Tanzania (due to White’s boyfriend, at the last minute, being unable to go) and his “strange behavior” fascinated the showrunner of the series, who conceived the character fitting Coolidge, with a generous margin for spontaneity. After all, it was a matter of instilling his peculiar way of being.

    Jennifer Coolidge

    The improvisational capacity of the actress, in handling an unusual comic rhythm, falsely uneven, with long silences, sustained gazes and declamations between feverish and hallucinated, he had previously attracted the attention of other guild figures. Eugene Levy, a co-star in ‘American Pie’, put cult comedian Christopher Guest on his trail, with whom he was writing the script for ‘Very Important Dogs’ (2000). Coolidge not only landed one of the starring roles in that acclaimed mockumentary about a canine beauty pageant, but has since appeared in every film Guest has made as a director. “Nobody acts like she acts. And I’m not talking about acting as an actress. I mean behave the way she behaves.” said the humorist and filmmaker to Variety.

    Not that Coolidge was simply seasoned in fictional comedy roles. She herself She is a comedian and was part of the group The Groundlings for nine years, since the late 90s, an improv school in Los Angeles that has functioned for decades as a source for the program ‘Saturday Night Live’: figures such as Will Ferrell, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig or Jon Lovitz have emerged from there. And, although it does not yet have its own special stand up of 60 minutes on any platform, last Christmas it went viral a hilarious fragment of a monologue of hers from 2010, where, in general terms, the actress claimed to have participated briefly in the drama about the Holocaust ‘Sophie’s decision’ (1982), in the supposed role of a pastry chef who revealed Sophie’s hiding place to the Gestapo while he ate a strudel.


    dead is great

    Between the marginal recognition of various colleagues from the independent film environment and an industry that only counted on her for by-products such as ‘Date Movie’ (2006) or ‘Epic Movie’ (2007), the trajectory of the actress was stuck in irrelevance. “I had big dreams and expectations when I was young, giant ideas, but it all went up in smoke. You get old and bad things start to happen.” summed up the actress at the Golden Globes. In the space of time since her stage as a regular face in movies for teens until she returned in style with ‘The White Lotus’, Jennifer Coolidge lived such humiliating professional experiences such as the fact that the team that was preparing the stage musical of ‘A Legally Blonde’ in London in 2011 demanded a casting to be able to repeat his own character, condition that, understandably offended, rejected.

    The almost complete disappearance of the conventional circuit made him bait for fake news pages dedicated to inventing celebrity deaths. On the occasion of one of these hoaxes, in 2016 the actress herself promptly reversed the situation and she gained notoriety when she, through Twitter, responded to the rumors about her death to ironically make it official (“Yeah, I’m dead, and it’s great!”) and go up a video performing the “bend over and stick out” of ‘Legally Blonde’ from, presumably, the Beyond, also because it was the 15th anniversary of the film’s premiere.

    And then, in 2018, Ariana Grande arrived. To promote your single ‘thank u, next’, the singer wanted to pay homage to several classic comedies from her childhood. Unlike those responsible for the ‘Legally Blonde’ musical, she was clear that the best possible person to play Paulette Bonafonté was the original actress. “I think this new generation, the generation of Ariana Grande [nacida en 1993]he likes me more than the first generation. Somehow I connect better with them, even though they are much younger than me.” Coolidge mused in Rolling Stone.

    The video clip, accompanied by the successful and highly shared imitation that Grande made of her on ‘The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon’ —not to mention her countless TikTok replies—, brought her back into focus. The rest is history: another small role in the sensation indie of 2020 ‘A promising young woman’ finished laying the foundation for what the American press has called Jennaisance (“the rebirth of Jennifer”), culminating in style with the HBO series.

    Consulted, after the Golden Globes, for what would be her dream role In this moment of fame, euphoria around her figure and deserved credit, where she will have more power than ever to choose and negotiate offers, Jennifer Coolidge did not hesitate: “I have always wanted to play a dolphin” (“Like Flipper”, as confirmed by the interviewer in his cross-examination). While, regarding ‘The White Lotus’, everything we know about season 3 indicates that his character will not return, Coolidge can now be seen in ‘Blow Up Wedding’, in Ryan Murphy’s horror series ‘Vigilante’, premiered on Netflix last October, and, also on that same platform at the end of February, in the movie ‘A ghost is loose in the house’. From the confirmed ‘Legally Blonde 3’, for its part, news is expected soon. If Flipper unfortunately doesn’t work out, at least Coolidge can rest assured that the wish expressed last year to Rolling Stone is on the right track: “I’d rather end my career with a bang than shut down.”

    Source: Fotogramas

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