Warning: This post contains spoilers for The White Lotus Season 2 finale.
In Season 1 of The White Lotus, Jennifer Coolidge’s wealthy Tanya didn’t only avoid death; she also became the only cast member to return for round two. But if you’re reading this, you know she won’t make it to round three. On Sunday night’s Season 2 finale, it was revealed Tanya was the body found floating in the water at the start of the season premiere. But she wasn’t alone; she took out at least three people with her, characters who wished her harm. That’s left the actress torn: sad that Tanya’s gone, stoked that she went out fighting.
In an exit interview with Vanity Fair, Coolidge — who won an Emmy for the first season and could very well win another for the second — revealed that show creator Mike White told her Tanya’s fate when he revealed that she’d be returning for Season 2. He braced her for the bad news:
Mike called me up and he goes, “Sicily is beautiful, Jennifer, you can’t believe how beautiful Sicily is and we’re gonna shoot it all here in Sicily, except for a few shots in Rome, but it’s all gonna be in Sicily and you’re gonna be blown away by how, you know, the beauty and all that–” He kept saying stuff like that, and then he goes, “and Jennifer?” I go, “Yeah?” And he goes, “and you’re gonna die.” Oh, no! I was like, “No! Mike! Mike, why?”
White justified offing the show’s most popular character by saying she’s a “tragic figure” that it’s “in line with all the great operas that were ever written.” (At one point in Season 2, Tanya even attends a production of Madama Butterfly, weeping while sharing glances with Tom Hollander’s Quentin, one of her future-almost murderers.)
Still, Coolidge admitted she was “kind of bummed,” even though she felt it was “awfully greedy of me to think that I should just keep going,” given all the “brilliant actors in the world” who could get to have a sad vacation at some far flung high-end resort.
Besides, there was a silver lining: Before taking a fatal fall off the yacht on which she’s trapped, Tanya shot three of her would-be killers dead. “You know, I just I was just thrilled that although I was going to lose my life, I was going to take a lot of lives,” Coolidge said. I liked that there were gonna be some bad guys that were going to get their—they deserved it. They deserve what they got and they were bad guys.”
Still, Coolidge pointed out she’s no fan of guns. But in fiction, when justified to spare Tanya’s life and take out some very dangerous people, that’s more than fine.
(Via Vanity Fair)
