Tanya's Fate On The White Lotus Was A Prank From Mike White To Jennifer Coolidge

If there's one thing legendary actress Jennifer Coolidge isn't cool with, it's boats. Or really any moving vehicle, as evidenced by a little prank "The White Lotus" creator Mike White played on her while filming the now-beloved season 2 of the HBO series. "She had such a bad time filming on the boat in the first season that I just imagined telling her, 'Yeah, now your character is going to die on a boat,'" White revealed in a May 2023 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. "Maybe I'm sadistic or something, but I knew Jennifer's reaction was going to make me laugh so hard."

Poor Jennifer Coolidge, though, because the actress — along with the rest of the cast filming on the boat for their entrance scene in season 1 — had to take Dramamine, a motion sickness medicine, just to stay ready and able during the shoot, according to THR. So she was already feeling quite bad just being present on set despite the excitement of the arrival to The White Lotus Hawaii in the pilot episode.

"I can't even ride in the back seat of the car," Coolidge explained to the outlet. "Anything that rocks, any kind of motion, and I get very sick. So everyone was one foot away from me on that boat, and I was puking up my guts. When [the show] was picked up for a second season, I swear to God, I heard Mike say, 'Yeah, no more boats.' And then, guess what? Lots of boats on this show."

For Coolidge, the symptoms of motion sickness — namely the nausea and dizziness — aided in setting the tone for her somewhat outlandish and unsettling death scene in season 2. After all, actually shooting on a boat had a lot of advantages that, well, just had to be taken advantage of, both from acting and production perspectives. "There's nothing more vulnerable than being on a boat with a bunch of people that don't want you to survive," Coolidge told THR. "If we'd shot it on a soundstage, it wouldn't have been the same — because I didn't even have to imagine much. I already felt vulnerable."

Knowing Coolidge suffers from motion sickness — something I, your writer friend, actually also suffer from — adds a whole other layer of skill and smarts to her performance in Tanya's pivotal death scene in season 2. It takes a lot to put those feelings at bay to get into the headspace of a character, but it takes a whole separate set of skills to actually use the unpleasant forces that seem to invade when motion sickness takes over and parlay them into a performance. Not to say Coolidge acts sick on the boat, but knowing that she actually was somewhat uncomfortable during the shoot really brings out the sense a woman on edge, which she probably was to some degree because of her condition. Acting is a really scrappy set of skills and it's incredible to watch how different performers bend and mold it to their will. There's a reason why Coolidge is nothing short of sublime.