Jennifer Coolidge Thanks ‘The White Lotus’ Creator Mike White, Others Who Kept Her “Going” During Career Lulls In Highly Bleeped Golden Globes Speech

Matt Grobar
·4 min read
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When Jennifer Coolidge claimed her first Golden Globe at the Beverly Hilton on Tuesday, she made an impassioned speech she’d initially planned to deliver in September.

Coolidge has been in the midst of a dramatic, late-career breakthrough with the hugely popular satire The White Lotus. The first major awards recognition for her work in the HBO series came at the 2022 Primetime Emmys. But as the actress noted at the Globes, after being awarded for the same role, she was given the “hook” by the TV Academy last fall before getting to say what she needed to say.

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“The hook came out at the last thing I got an award at, this giant hook,” Coolidge joked. “I thought it left when vaudeville ended, but this hook came out and took me off the stage.”

Part of what Coolidge wanted to express — and that she was able to tonight — was that she had
“big dreams and expectations” for herself as a younger person, even if they seemed to “fizzle” as she moved through life. While she might have once thought she was going to be “Queen of Monaco,” she eventually found herself thinking, “None of this sh*t’s going to happen anymore.”

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Fortunately, she said, over the years there were a handful of people who went out of their way to help her, giving her jobs that kept her career in forward motion. “Ryan Murphy, you were one of them,” Coolidge told the producer, who tonight accepted the Globes’ Carol Burnett Award. The actress also singled out Michael Patrick King (of Sex and the City fame), as well as her Legally Blonde collaborator Reese Witherspoon and the creatives behind the American Pie franchise at Universal for the positive impact they played in her careers. “I’ve milked that to the bone,” she said of the latter film series. “I mean, I’m still going for six or seven, or whatever they want.”

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Coolidge then got around to thanking Mike White — the creator of The White Lotus who’d been her friend long before penning the water cooler phenomenon. “[Mike’s] worried about the world, he’s worried about people, he’s worried about animals,” said the actress. “He really is one of the greatest people I’ve ever met.”

Coolidge also thanked White specifically for casting her in The White Lotus, which she said has offered her new “hope” and the sense of “a new beginning.

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“This is the end, because you did kill me off [on The White Lotus],” the actress deadpanned. “But it doesn’t matter because even if this is the end, you’ve changed my life in a million different ways. My neighbors are speaking to me — things like that.”

The White Lotus is a dark comedy examining the interactions between employees and guests at a series of luxury hotels. One of the only characters to return for the show’s Sicily-set second season was Coolidge’s Tanya McQuoid — a tortured and hugely wealthy vacationer who this time around foiled an attempt to murder her, only to go on to die what White has called the most “derpy” death possible.

Coolidge was also nominated at the Globes for The White Lotus last year, this time around winning in the category of Best Performance by an Actress in Supporting Role, Limited Series, Anthology Series or a Motion Picture made for Television. She prevailed over competition that included her White Lotus Season 2 co-star Aubrey Plaza, as well as Fleishman Is in Trouble‘s Claire Danes, Under the Banner of Heaven‘s Daisy Edgar-Jones and Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story‘s Niecy Nash-Betts.

Renewed for a third season in November, The White Lotus also tonight won the Golden Globe for Television Limited Series, Anthology Series or Television Motion Picture, with White accepting the prize. During his big moment later on in the show, White said that he was still “so choked up” by Coolidge’s speech — and admittedly quite “drunk”, “because there was no food” at his table.

View Coolidge’s acceptance speech above.

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