Jennifer Coolidge had an improvised scene in The White Lotus, and it’s hilariously on brand
Haley Lu Richardson as Portia (L) and Jennifer Coolidge as Tanya (R) in The White Lotus. (HBO)
Haley Lu Richardson has revealed that Jennifer Coolidge had a hilarious improvised moment while filming season two of The White Lotus.
Season two of the hit HBO series saw the return of Jennifer Coolidge’s fan favourite character Tanya McQuoid – this time with assistant Portia (Richardson) in tow.
Much like the first season, the show followed the events leading up to a mysterious death (or two), in which Tanya is immediately plunged into danger.
After arriving in Sicily on holiday with her husband Greg (Jon Gries), Tanya is soon left with her reluctant Gen Z assistant Portia for company after he ditches her for a “work thing”.
In her paranoia, she begins to worry what Greg is really up to, but she starts to put the pieces together after she’s adopted by a bunch of gay men who take her to remote island of Palermo.
And it looks like fans missed out on a hilarious unscripted scene from the Golden Globe winning actor, which Richardson told E! was one of her favourite moments on set.
“My favourite moment with her was part of this scene that didn’t make it into the show,” she reminisced. “It was iconic and it was so cool. I got to see something iconic that she did that no one else will get to see.”
According to Richardson, the scene in question came during a hotel breakfast, a regular fixture in the show where we catch up with most of the cast every episode. Departing from the script, Coolidge started improvising about the whereabouts of her husband.
“She’s like ‘do you think Greg is cheating on me?’. She went off on this tangent that wasn’t in the script where she was like, ‘do you? Do you?’,” Richardson continued, putting on her best Coolidge impression.
“Looking around at everyone at breakfast screaming ‘do you?’. The rest of the time we were filming we were all just saying ‘do you!'”.
While we may never get a chance to see the genius scene, we do get another iconic moment centred around Greg’s cheating in the final episode, when Tanya goes on a shooting rampage on the boat she’s trapped on with her hired assassins.
After she has shot the lead gay, Quentin (Tom Hollander), she asks “Is Greg having an affair?” while surrounded by dead bodies – a scene which left viewers in hysterics.
Sadly, it’s not the only deleted scene involving Coolidge we’ve missed out on. During Tanya’s time on Palermo, she takes cocaine and starts tripping.
According to season one star Lukas Gage, who played hotel employee Dillon, his character was meant to appear alongside teen Quinn Mossbacher (Fred Hechinger) in front of Coolidge in a drug-induced hallucination.
“It got cut because it didn’t work with the show,” Gage told The Hollywood Reporter, “but I didn’t care because I got a free trip to the Four Seasons. And now for season three, I’m literally writing Mike [White] every day like, hey, remember me!”
Despite her character being dispatched in season two, fans already have ideas about how Coolidge could return in The White Lotus – and they mainly involve Tanya’s imaginary long lost twin sister.
Other fans think the show should simply commit to not explaining Coolidge’s return at all.
The White Lotus season one and two are available to watch on HBO Max and Sky Atlantic.
