Jennifer Coolidge – The Other Woman

For most of her career, Jennifer Coolidge has been spinning roles as trophy wives and divorcées into comic gold. Now she gets to show what else she can do.

- By E. Alex Jung. Photographs by Irina Rozovsky

Here in the dark cocoon of her parlor, Jennifer Coolidge comes alive. All-day, the New Orleans heat made her leaden and itchy, but now that the sunlight has drained from the sky and the moisture has been wicked from the air, the actress is ready and alert. She asks me to fix us another round of tequila cocktails as she shuffles around her home in puffy pink slippers, closing doors and turning off lights to set the mood. She has been waiting for hours to unveil what she calls “the surprise.”

I arrived early in the afternoon at her home in the Lower Garden District, where she greeted me at the cast-iron gate, wearing a black slip and a sheer fuchsia-and-gold bolero, as her rescue dog, Chewy (short for Chewbacca), ran around the fluted Ionic columns. She bought this 1867 house just before Hurricane Katrina and has spent much of her time restoring it to its former Greek Revival–slash– Italianate glory: shoring up the foundation, replacing the wiring, repairing the roof, patching the plaster, and filling it with Persian rugs, tasseled ottomans, an upholstered minibar, armoires. Oil portraits in gilded frames stare down from the high walls. Coolidge believes there is a “presence” in the house, although not an evil one.

“Welcome to the mausoleum,” she announces as she emerges holding a candlestick with a clinking crystal skirt, a long black taper set inside it. She leads me into a darkened room with heavy-drawn curtains and the smell of lilies in the air.

“Are you going to kill me?” I whisper.

“Yes,” she whispers. “I am.”