Dear Jennifer Coolidge,
Lately I’ve been writing letters. Real letters, I mean. I sit down and address the swirl of my thoughts toward a specific person, trying not to judge my handwriting too harshly, and then send them off to be read days later—like time travel in an envelope. It feels like a chance to briefly wander into another era, allowing space for reflection without an algorithm’s insistence or the haunt of endless scroll. Simply a writer and her words, with everything else stripped away.
Because of this, I’ve been thinking about letters, specifically the unsent letter, as a form or genre—this magical space where we can say things (without really saying them) to the person they’re meant for. What happens on the page when we address our thoughts to someone, knowing full well that the recipient will never read them? Isn’t it possible that reception and response sometimes matter less than just putting our feelings into words in the first place?
It’s funny, Jennifer Coolidge, because I’ll never send you this letter, and yet I’m finding there’s something different about the space I’ve created here just by writing your name. Like a spell, maybe, or a prayer.
So this is how I find myself writing to you, Jennifer Coolidge. I wonder where you’ll lead me.
* * *
When it feels like the world is falling apart, Jennifer Coolidge, I have my movies. For a little while I can loosen my grip on the present and exist within the loop of a beloved favorite film. Such a rewatch feels like the emotional opposite of doomscrolling—a return to what is safe, known, and comforting, rather than a digital conveyor belt of brand-new bad news. After all, many of my favorite comedies are permanently nestled within the happy memories of their first watches. Laughter in this context allows me to revisit the times that I have felt good in the past, and laughter moves me toward a place where I will feel good again, and so the space between the two becomes easier to exist within.
You once said that movies kept you alive during dark times. How did it feel, Jennifer Coolidge? To enter a theater in pieces, sitting in that dark room with your eyes trained on a bright wall and putting your trust in the story it told. Did it make you laugh?
If I go too long without laughing, I feel as if I am being stretched thinner and thinner over time. Laughter springs me back into a shape where I feel like myself again.
And these days, when I need to feel like myself again, I turn to Austenland.
* * *
Are happy endings a right, Jennifer Coolidge? Austenland (2013) proffers an alternate suggestion: What if we dispensed with wondering, and simply lived our lives as if they were?
A romantic comedy that makes real the dream of English majors everywhere—you can, in fact, disappear into your favorite book. For Jane Hayes, that’s the Austen classic, Pride and Prejudice. So she blows a bunch of cash on a trip to a resort conceptualized to offer women the experience of finding their own Mr. Darcy. (For a price.)
Upon her arrival in Austenland, Jane is initially entranced by the depth of immersion in a world she has loved for so long. It’s easy to appreciate the resort’s elaborate furnishings, period-appropriate costumes, and actors so convincing that the line between fantasy and reality increasingly begins to blur. But soon after, Jane begins to suspect that her purchase of the lower-tier Copper package may not have afforded her the happily-ever-after her fellow Platinum heroines are ensured. And so she decides to take her storyline into her own hands.
This is a film for anyone who has a preferred adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, or perhaps a cardboard cutout of Colin Firth. It is also a film for people who believe things will get better, or who want to believe this and require the assistance of art to help them bridge that mental gap. It is a film for people with dreams, Jennifer Coolidge. People with the audacity to believe they might actually get what they want, just not in the way that they expect.
Like it happened to you.
* * *
The story goes that you wanted to be Meryl Streep, but you became yourself instead, eventually rewarded with two Emmys and a Golden Globe for your efforts. To me, the awards seem almost incidental when one accounts for the joy you appear to have garnered from your superpower of improvisation. Just trying to find a way to make people laugh with what you’re given.
This is what I tend to find myself more interested in, anyway—not so much following what wins awards or achieves mainstream recognition as exploring an artist’s relationship to their own work. You say that movies kept you alive, Jennifer Coolidge. When movies are the sustenance that keeps somebody going, what will that person turn around and make with the life that movies gave them?
I love a comedy where the cast seem to be enjoying themselves, and this often appears to be the case with projects you accept. Austenland’s credits treat the viewer to a choreographed “Hot in Herre” music video featuring the film’s lip-syncing cast in full Regency attire. This reminds me that art is not something we have to toil over in misery to produce; the creation itself can be just as fun as the final product. Maybe we don’t have to take ourselves quite so seriously. The work might even be better for it.
In another interview, you said that you feel like you get credit for being funny because there are “so many things wrong” with you; you “just don’t have it together.” But maybe it’s when we don’t have it together, Jennifer Coolidge, that we can work to reshape those broken pieces into something far more interesting than perfection: a story that reflects real life, instead. Maybe even one that makes us laugh every once in a while.
* * *
It is interesting to me, Jennifer Coolidge, how often you speak about mortality. In your acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actress at the 2023 Golden Globe Awards, you were effusive in your gratitude toward White Lotus creator Mike White, proclaiming that he makes people “want to live longer”—while you hadn’t, you quickly added, almost as an afterthought. There is a phenomenon that often occurs, in your interviews and your speeches, where you directly address some uncomfortable truth with honesty and humor. The laughter cushions the more serious revelation that exists within the joke, so that the layers are only fully processed when the viewer stops to think about it.
There’s a moment in Austenland where a character regales the group with the dramatic story of a confrontation that nearly cost him his life. In the midst of his disclosure of these harrowing events, you ask him in an awed and earnest voice, “DID YOU DIE?!”
I am obsessed with this scene, this line, this sentiment. Your inquiry becomes an invitation to own that truth, to cease taking the continuation of life for granted. DID YOU DIE?! Not today!
Somewhere along the line, this question became my anchor, my mantra, my anthem. It is perhaps my favorite moment of the entire film; I quote it regularly, which is one of the ultimate stamps of a successful cinematic legacy. A beloved script works its way into viewers’ everyday vernacular, a golden thread in the ongoing fabric of their lives.
Every day we all hurtle a little closer toward the inevitable end, Jennifer Coolidge, but for now we’re still here. We might as well have a goddamn laugh while we’re doing it.
* * *
I have a complicated relationship to the phrase guilty pleasure, Jennifer Coolidge. Or maybe it’s not so complicated at all: I hate it. Guilty pleasure implies hierarchy, denotes shame, grants permission to allow the opinions of others to shape personal feelings around one’s own viewing preferences. I would like to propose that we release shame from the experience of consuming art that truly moves us. Why waste energy on feeling guilty about loving a film that brings you joy? What if—just as an experiment—we let the things we love lead us forward, lead us through?
Maybe we begin this journey by unabashedly embracing those stories we love. Like Jane with her preferred Pride and Prejudice adaptation (the 1995 BBC take starring Colin Firth, thank you very much); like you at the movie theater during those dark times before your Emmys, before your Golden Globe; like me on the couch watching Austenland, mouthing “DID YOU DIE?!” and laughing like it’s the first time, springing back into a shape that feels a bit more like me again.