‘The White Lotus Star Jennifer Coolidge Talks Season 2 Finale Shocker & The Character Shed Like To See Meet A Terrible Fate

SPOILER ALERT: The following story contains details from the Season 2 finale of HBO’s The White Lotus.

The White Lotus star Jennifer Coolidge has weighed in on Tanya McQuoid’s checkout from the hit HBO series.

Her response when creator Mike White first told her his plans for her heiress character? “What? What? Oh, come on, Mike. Really?”

In conversation with Deadline on Monday, Coolidge shared that White first approached her about returning for Season 2 maybe “a month before he even pondered up” a concrete idea for the new installment’s story. She wasn’t aware at the time that Tanya would die in the finale, which aired last night, though that revelation would come during a second call while she was in New York filming Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series, The Watcher. “He said, ‘Sicily is incredible. That’s where we’re going to film White Lotus 2. You’re going to lose your mind, Jennifer. It’s so beautiful here,’” she recalls. “And then he goes, ‘Oh yeah, one other thing. You’re going to die.’”

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Coolidge would have to wait even longer to find out precisely how McQuoid meets her end. But while the prospect of exiting The White Lotus remains bittersweet for the actress, she also feels Tanya’s dramatic death makes sense given the “operatic” nature of the show itself, and her character’s tendency of being her “own worst enemy.”

One of the only White Lotus characters to return for Season 2, Tanya dies accidentally following a clumsy jump from the side of a yacht to a tethered motorboat. She attempts the leap in a panic, after realizing the group of gay men she’s been vacationing with in Italy — including Tom Hollander’s Quentin — are going to attempt to kill her, such that her fortune falls into the possession of her husband, Greg (Jon Gries).

“I have to say, I liked my part,” said Coolidge. “I mean, I know people had high hopes for her when she left with this guy that seemed to really like her from White Lotus 1 after her very sad tale of having to bury her mother, not really recovering…But I liked that we started White Lotus 2 really thinking some cool stuff was going to happen for her…I got quite a cool part, and…there were so many cool scenes that I got to play.

While Coolidge’s character gets some form of justice for herself before dying clumsily through her own actions, by gunning down almost everyone on board the yacht with the weapon intended to end her life, she’s fairly certain that Greg will get his hands on “all” of Tanya’s money, with Quentin and his friends out of the picture.

She hopes, at the same time, that he’ll get his comeuppance, whether it’s depicted in The White Lotus Season 3 or not. “My hope for Greg is that he ends up in some horrific jail somewhere. I think dying would be just too good, too easy for him,” says Coolidge. “He’s a really creepy guy and was plotting this woman’s murder. From the beginning, he saw a woman with a lot of money and wanted to take it from her, and take her life. So, I think he deserves a terrible fate.”

For the uninitiated, The White Lotus is a dark satire that examines the interactions of guests and employees at a series of luxury resorts, as a means of speaking to issues of power and sexual politics, among other topics. 

The second season of the show written and directed by White, which came to its end last night, also starred 

Aubrey Plaza, Will Sharpe, Sabrina Impacciatore, Theo James, Meghann Fahy, F. Murray Abraham, Adam DiMarco, Michael Imperioli, Haley Lu Richardson, Leo Woodall, Beatrice Grannó and Simona Tabasco. Exec producers on Season 2 included White, David Bernad and Mark Kamine.

Coolidge this morning landed her second consecutive Golden Globe nomination for her turn as Tanya, having won her first Emmy for the part in September. The actress was joined in the category of Actress in a Supporting Role on Television by Aubrey Plaza, with F. Murray Abraham and the show itself also being nominated. 

The White Lotus’ Season 3 renewal came in November. And in a brief post-show interview airing last night, White hinted that the likely Asia-bound Season 3 will explore “death in Eastern religion and spirituality.”

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