Jennifer Coolidge breaks down The White Lotus season 2 finale ending: 'Poor Tanya, she misjudged'
Warning: This article contains spoilers about The White Lotus season 2 finale.
Jennifer Coolidge wants to make it very clear: Tanya did not survive The White Lotus season 2.
It might be shocking to hear her talk about Tanya's death as if it needed to be confirmed, since the season 2 finale shows her fan-favorite character sinking into the depths of the ocean after falling off a yacht and hitting her head, never coming back up for air, her body discovered the next morning by Daphne (Meghann Fahy). Italian authorities are literally shown zipping her into a body bag and taking her to the morgue. Coolidge thought that all made it very obvious to viewers, but after the finale aired Sunday night, she's spent all Monday morning breaking the news to multiple people still convinced Tanya managed to survive all of that.
"I actually had a couple people say to me today they are so glad that I didn't die," Coolidge tells EW with a laugh. "And I had to correct them."
Below, Coolidge — who we revealed as our 2022 Entertainer of the Year — breaks down the season 2 finale ending, how she felt about the way Tanya went out guns blazing before her death, and more.
Fabio Lovino/HBO Jennifer Coolidge in 'The White Lotus'
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What have you thought of the reaction to the episode so far?
JENNIFER COOLIDGE: It's very exciting to hear that that many people tuned in and that [showrunner] Mike [White] created this thing where people really connected with the show and got this massive audience going. There's all kinds of reactions to it. There was actually more than two people who thought it was like some sort of dream. They thought it was a dream even though I was in a body bag. They somehow thought it was all in Tanya's head or whatever. They didn't get that I was dead dead, forever. Dead in every sense.
So you had to break the news to them?
Yeah, and then I had to watch and listen to their reactions like, "Oh, really? Oh, no!" I was just surprised that they were just finding out this morning that it's real. But it all fits into the story that Mike is telling, it makes sense for Tanya, this is her life. She was very vulnerable for quite a bit of this show. And sometimes it just doesn't work out well for vulnerable people in a world with some really bad people. Even though Tanya was a very flawed person and in many ways, you could say she was not nice and self-centered and all that, but some people are in this lifetime get surrounded by a group of people and it's very hard sometimes to know who the good guys are and the bad guys are in this world. Poor Tanya, she misjudged.
It's fascinating because she was always so paranoid and suspicious of people's motives and the one time she let her guard down was the worst possible time.
Yes! But Mike and I had a talk about it. Mike was like, "I'm killing you off." He said that to me very early on, he said, "You're not going to make it, Jennifer. Tanya has to die because I want to write this next one about, how you don't really ever see...." I'm trying to think of shows where I've seen a gay man being bad and I couldn't think of any offhand. I think of how many gay men there are that just haven't been portrayed — because Mike said, "You're eventually going to escape from Greg [Jon Gries] for a moment, but you're going to end up with these evil gays." And I was like, "Oh, that's interesting." I didn't predict Mike to say that, but he did a really good job throwing them in there. They added so much to how scary it got. I don't know, it's something I hadn't really thought about.
When Mike told you that you were getting killed off, what was your reaction? Did you want to die or did you try to convince Mike not to choose your character as the victim this season?
Yes! I said to him jokingly throughout the filming, I'm like, "You don't have to, you know? Tanya doesn't have to die." I would joke with him. It's so funny because I don't really know Mike's writing process, but it's like all these pieces to a puzzle and so when he comes up with something like Tanya has to die, I mean, she really did. This was an episode about women and all that they have to put up with and all their survival techniques that are revealed in this. I think about how the character of Daphne, just what she does survive, the moments where she's like sort of sociopathic, adjusting her brain so she can handle information and deny what's going on. And then Aubrey [Plaza]'s character, Harper, it's more just the complete opposite of Daphne, just painfully wanting to get to the truth of something, and then what her actual motive was, you have a weak moment in the end, it's sort of revenge on the man, which doesn't actually feel better either. But everyone's just trying to survive when all this mean stuff is going on. It's like how do you handle betrayal? It's hard to handle betrayal in a normal, well-adjusted way because it's such a hard thing to process.
I remember I saw an Oprah episode many, many years ago, and someone asked her what's the worst thing you could do to a person, what's the worst topic of something where people don't recover from something, and I remember her saying, "I think it's betrayal. People don't recover from it." And there's a lot of betrayal going on in this show. There was a lot of women in this show having to survive a lot of different aspects of being a woman and all of it is intentional. Mike is a master. I was hanging out with Mike White last week and we were talking about the whole thing with women and what he wanted to say in this episode and what his goal was and why he wrote it.
Speaking of betrayal, we don't see Greg return in the finale, but he obviously plays such a big role. Did you think that Greg was conning Tanya from the very first time that she met him in season 1, or do you think that he formed this plan with Quentin (Tom Hollander) later on in their relationship?
I do not think that Greg had planned — I think Mike was trying to figure out what he was going to do with Greg. God, it was so funny because I have all these smart friends and neighbors that go back and look early on at the episodes, and one of my neighbors in New Orleans said, "Oh my God, I went back to episode 1 and there was this line that Greg says where you realize he had this planned all along." And you're like, "Oh my God, that is so smart of them to figure that out." But I think Mike had not planned for Greg to go this way. He had good intentions for Greg, but thought maybe it'd be more interesting if he was awful.
Fabio Lovino/HBO Jennifer Coolidge on 'The White Lotus'
You previously told EW that this season felt really personal with the con story line — now that all the episodes are out, are you able to elaborate on how you related to it?
Mike White knows me pretty well. We've been friends for a very, very long time. I met him on Gentlemen Broncos [in 2009], Mike [played] my boyfriend. We've known each other since then, and Mike is sitting there, he's this brilliant mind, and he's just observes people. He was observing my naivete with a lot of my male relationships and saw how I just believed people in a very naive way. Sometimes it's good because, certainly I'm not discriminating of anyone in any way, but I sort of open the door and sometimes my realization of who someone was and what their intentions are are very slow.
I did end up in a situation where — actually I think Mike combined multiple situations where I was with people I shouldn't have been in with at all, and just my — [laughs] I still want to call it naivete, otherwise I'm just stupid. It's just people that are putting on a really good show, but they don't like you, really, deep down. You know, I'm not one of these people that's made millions and millions of dollars in our industry, but whenever I had, whatever little I had, they were there to take it. And my obliviousness, my oblivious nature of not seeing the writing on the wall and actually denying any sort of sign that something was amiss, I was denying it. I think that happens to a lot of people, but I definitely think Mike had observed that and made that part of the script.
On the flip side of that, Tanya did figure out the plan against her, and she was able to shoot and kill Quentin and the other guys before she died. Did that feel like some kind of justice for Tanya?
Oh, yeah. I always find it interesting, and I'm trying to think of how much of this was entirely played out with Tanya, sometimes I get this very, very bad gut feeling, but I can't place where it's supposed to go. Mike took me a couple of steps ahead, that I was putting a few pieces together but there is this weird thing sometimes where you get this bad feeling and you cannot figure out where it fits. You get this instinctual, bad feeling sometimes, and you're sort of like a deer in the woods: is it a hunter behind one of these trees or is it something further in the forest? You just get this instinctual gut feeling that something bad is going to happen, but you don't know the ending. I do have that and I really do love that section of the final episode where Tanya is putting the pieces together with Portia [Haley Lu Richardson].
I love that Mike did this whole thing for a long time where the first time Tanya is in Quentin's bedroom, and she sees that photo and the guy looks like Greg, but she doesn't really do anything about it, I think that's very real. It's too big a thought to consider that someone would be that awful and be deceiving you, so your mind makes a decision to just throw it away, but not really take care of business and try to figure out. Tanya just sort of let that moment go. And then she did go back a second time, thank God, but it's too big of a complicated thought to think that someone doesn't have your best interests. I don't think a lot of people want to think negatively like that, because it's too overwhelming, it's too creepy. You don't want to believe that someone that you're hanging out with doesn't like you at all, even though they're putting on a really good act.
What was it like filming those underwater scenes where we see Tanya's dead body floating in the ocean the night of her death and the morning after?
I heard that we were going to maybe reshoot those scenes in Los Angeles, and I was glad that they were able to piece together the footage we did. I shot in a pool and I think they weren't getting enough ... and then we shot where I really was floating in the ocean there and when Daphne discovers me and stuff. I was just glad I wasn't going to have to reshoot the drowning. It would have been all day and they have these big soundstages that are for water stuff on the west side of L.A. [Laughs] But I'm glad we didn't have to go back and revisit that.
Was it difficult when you were shooting those scenes on location?
Well, it's just that you have to hold your breath for so long. And you get tired out doing it. You have to go a long period time. I guess the camera guys have tanks on them but I just couldn't — I heard that Kate Winslet has out-competed Tom Cruise in the holding the breath the longest thing, I heard she can hold her breath for seven minutes or something like that. And boy, I would love to ask her how she did that. When they say go under and hold your breath as long as you can, I go under and I'm like, "Okay, I'm done." And then you have signals from the cameramen to stay and you have to stay down there. It was really hard.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
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