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There’s never a bad time to appreciate the celebrities who (against all odds) seem to be having a little fun in their lives. So in our new column, Love That for Her, we’ll be celebrating the women absolutely nailing life right now—may their joie de vivre inspire us all.
How do I love thee, Jennifer Coolidge? Let me count the ways.
To start from the beginning, I distinctly remember the first time I saw Coolidge on screen—sultry, pillow-lipped, platinum blonde hair perfectly tousled—as Stifler’s mom in American Pie, seducing Finch with a tumbler of whiskey and a cigarette. (I was a pre-teen and staying at my friend’s house, enjoying the illicit thrill of watching a movie we were definitely too young for while the parents were out.) Later, I’d fall in love with her all over again as the spunky manicurist Paulette in Legally Blonde, perfecting the “bend and snap” and confronting her deadbeat ex with the classic line: “I’m takin’ the dog, dumbass!” And all that’s without even mentioning her endlessly hilarious collaborations with Christopher Guest—my personal favorite being her turn as the ditzy blonde Sherri Ann with a poodle and an aging sugar daddy in Best in Show.
Still, all felt quiet on the Coolidge front for a number of years—until, that is, she returned with a bang as the indisputable star of Mike White’s The White Lotus, playing the troubled, tragic, and side-splittingly (if somewhat unintentionally) funny Tanya, a woman who travels to Hawaii to scatter her mother’s ashes and ends up establishing an awkward, transactional “friendship” with her hotel’s beleaguered massage therapist, Belinda. With the show debuting to stellar ratings and a second season on the way, Coolidge is back, baby—and if the effusive reviews she received for her performance weren’t enough to prove a Jen-assaince is upon us, just take a look at those Golden Globe and Emmy nominations.
To herald the return of The White Lotus in October—this time, set in the glamorous resort town of Taormina, Sicily—Coolidge kicked off her press tour with a cover story in Variety earlier this week. And among the various juicy tidbits she shared (she was vomiting all the way through shooting that boat scene in the first season of The White Lotus, and has been mainlining up to 25 cappuccinos a day to keep her stamina up while filming the second), came one that particularly set the internet abuzz.
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“I got a lot of play of being a MILF, and I got a lot of sexual action from American Pie,” she said in a video accompanying the interview. “There were so many benefits to doing that movie. I mean, there would be like 200 people that I would’ve never have slept with.”
Wait, rewind. 200 people? Of course, we’d expect nothing less for the original MILF—the acronym her character helped coin, and that remains in the pop-culture lexicon to this day—but 200? That’s some impressive work, so let me just come out and say it: I love that for her.
Of course, Coolidge was typically arch as she dished all this, her gently raspy voice offering the aural equivalent of a wink. Part of the joy of Jen is that you never quite know whether she’s joking or not—and either way, she’s very much in on the joke. No more so than elsewhere in the interview, when she’s asked if she watches the Real Housewives. (Yes, it turns out, with her particular favorite being Beverly Hills.) As is custom when anyone identifies themselves as a fan of the hit Bravo franchise, the next question was: What would your tagline be? “If any of you girls say anything cunty to me, I’m gonna beat the shit out of you,” she replied, with a grin. Never change, Jennifer Coolidge.