The lie Jennifer Coolidge told to land her role on ‘Seinfeld’
Even though she’s now 30 years into a film and television career that’s seen plenty of success and acclaim along the way, a strong argument could be made that Jennifer Coolidge has never been a bigger name than she is right now.
A large part of that is down to The White Lotus, which blew away any lingering perceptions that the best use of her talents was a scene-stealing comedic performer, with the jet-black dramatic comedy landing her two Primetime Emmys and a Golden Globe for her turn as self-absorbed heiress Tanya McQuoid.
Of course, her mainstream breakthrough came as Stifler’s sultry mother in American Pie, which was quickly followed by another memorable gig as manicurist Paulette Bonafonté Parcelle in Legally Blonde, which coincided with the first of her four collaborations with Christopher Guest in 2000’s Best in Show. Since then, Coolidge’s mere presence is enough to guarantee at least one big laugh, never mind her second life as something of a deified figure on the internet.
Everybody has to start somewhere, though, and for Coolidge, that happened on Seinfeld. The very first big or small screen credit of her career came in the fifth season episode ‘The Masseuse’, where her character Jodi was Jerry’s girlfriend for that particular week. It opened doors that had previously remained closed by her own admission, even if she had to lie to get there in the first place.
In an interview with GQ, Coolidge revealed that her almost entire fabricated performative history was only the beginning of her journey towards one-off Seinfeld stardom: “I only had lies on my resume. I’d gone to a school called American Academy of Dramatic Arts up in Pasadena, and I’d just named all these shows and all these different theatres at the school as if they played there,” she explained. “You have to do that if you have a blank resume, until you start getting jobs. Then you can slowly erase the lies. I’d love to get my hands on that resume now.”
Recalling that she “didn’t even have decent clothes to audition in”, a trip to rectify that issue ended up with some frank fashion advice: “So I went to this store, and there was a mother and daughter who worked in the store. I said, ‘I’m auditioning for Seinfeld tomorrow,'” she continued. “And they were like, ‘Oh, honey, you’ve got to wear better clothes than what you’re wearing.’ So they made me buy this little outfit, and I think it got me the job!”
The effect on her standing was immediate, with Coolidge noting that “all these casting directors that would never let me through the doorwell” were suddenly happy to consider her for parts. Even when her star was firmly in the ascendancy, Seinfeld proved to be the gift that kept on giving after a producer chose her for a part over another contender after a rerun of her solitary episode had aired the night before the audition.
