Jennifer Coolidge nearly didn’t make her flight to Hawaii.
The actress recently revealed that she nearly didn’t take her now-iconic role as the grieving socialite Tanya McQuoid in HBO’s The White Lotus. Coolidge, who nabbed an Emmy nomination for the role, said she almost missed out because she was insecure about her pandemic weight gain.
“It was COVID, [I was] locked up with this very nice girl that I knew in New Orleans,” Coolidge told People in an interview published Sept. 1. “It was just very lonely times…and so she and I got obsessed with these vegan pizzas and we were eating a lot of them each day.”
“The number kept increasing,” she continued. “You can sort of numb out any worry you have in the world if you just eat another pizza.”
Coolidge is nothing if not relatable.
So, when White Lotus creator Mike White reached out to her, Coolidge initially turned down the role because she wasn’t, as she put it, in “fighting shape”—even asking White if they could move shooting (they didn’t).