WARNING: This article contains major spoilers about the final episode of season 2 of The White Lotus.
Jennifer Coolidge has revealed she wanted to channel Tom Cruise as she prepared to film her final scenes in season 2 of The White Lotus, but the show’s creator Mike White had other ideas.
In the show’s thrilling final episode, Jennifer’s character Tanya ends up coming a cropper when she attempted to jump from a yacht into a dinghy after shooting all of her new gay friends, after realising they were conspiring with her husband to have her killed off.
The Legally Blonde star has now revealed that it was a stunt double who filmed the shocking scene, but if she’d had her way, it would’ve been her.
“I didn’t feel like the boat was that far off the water,” she told Vulture. “I wanted it to be me. I wanted it to be me falling off the boat. I didn’t want it to be a stunt double.
“Mike was like, ‘The water’s really cold!’ And I said, ‘I don’t care if the water’s cold! I want to fall off the boat!’ He said, ’Jennifer, our stunt double has been waiting here all night to do her stunt. It would be weird to say, ‘Hey you can go home now’.”
Jennifer eventually agreed that it would be “weird” to send home the “very cool and funny Italian” stunt woman.
She added: “But I was like, I get why Tom Cruise wants to do his own stunts. You think, ‘well, why can’t I do that?’. Who cares if the water is cold! But it was this fall between these two boats, and insurance, and you know. But it would’ve been fun.”
However, when it came to filming those underwater shots of a very dead Tanya floating in the sea, that was all Jennifer.
“I was definitely floating in the ocean when Daphne discovers me, that was me floating around,” Jennifer revealed. “I had to hold my breath for a long time.”
She added: “You know, I’ve only seen the finale once now. I watched it Sunday night with Mike White. I’m not sure what was me and what was the stunt double. I’m so fascinated.”