‘The Watcher’ Teaser: Jennifer Coolidge Is a Karen in Ryan Murphy’s Twisted True Crime Story for Netflix

Samantha Bergeson
·3 min read
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Meet Karen Calhoun. She’s not like a regular Karen: She’s a cool Karen, and is ready to sell you your dream home. But Karen just may or may not be a stalker…

Jennifer Coolidge transforms into Karen, an elite New Jersey real estate agent at the center of Ryan Murphy’s latest true crime miniseries, “The Watcher.” Based on true events, “The Watcher” even has a faux Zillow listing for the infamous Westfield, New Jersey house that Karen Calhoun sold an unsuspecting couple, played by Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale. Emmy winner Murphy and Ian Brennan co-created and executive produce the series, which also stars Mia Farrow and Margo Martindale.

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The official series description reads: “Dean (Cannavale) and Nora Brannock (Watts) just purchased their dream home in the idyllic suburb of Westfield, New Jersey, but after putting all of their savings into closing the deal they soon realize the neighborhood is less than welcoming. There’s a kooky older woman named Pearl (Farrow) and her brother Jasper (Terry Kinney), who sneaks into the Brannock’s house and hides in their dumbwaiter. There’s Karen (Coolidge), the realtor and an old acquaintance of Nora’s, who makes them feel like they don’t really belong, and nosy neighbors Mitch (Richard Kind) and Mo (Martindale), who don’t seem to understand property lines. Their icy welcome quickly turns into a full-blown living hell when ominous letters from someone calling themself ‘The Watcher’ start arriving, terrorizing the Brannocks to their breaking point as the neighborhood’s sinister secrets come spilling out.”

Executive producers also include Alexis Martin Woodall, Eric Kovtun, Bryan Unkeless, Eric Newman, Paris Barclay, Naomi Watts, Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost, and Scoop Wasserstein.

Coolidge previously addressed feeling typecast for certain roles in her career prior to her Emmy-nominated turn in “The White Lotus.”

“I was in this weird bubble for a really long time. And it just goes to show that you should really hold out and not just keep repeating yourself, but I was always desperate for the job,” Coolidge admitted. “A lot of the time I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever have an offer again.'”

She added, “There was this very long period of just repeating myself. There was a period where, except for an occasional Christopher Guest movie, the scripts arriving at my door were lots of gold digger parts. It was a certain kind of thing that I had already done. I guess that’s what happens to us a lot unless we steer it a different way. I wish I had been more involved in the control of my career. I just sat back, I was very passive.”

Now, Coolidge is exerting her control a maybe-murderous Karen. You have to see it to believe it…

“The Watcher” premieres this fall on Netflix.

Check out the teaser below.

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