Warning: Final spoilers for “The White Lotus” Season 2 are as big as Tania’s hair.
She looks like Jennifer Coolidge he wasn’t ready to say Until we meet again to her lover “The White Lotuscharacter Tanya McQuoid-Hunt.
In the second season finale of the HBO anthology series Sunday, the character earned Coolidge his first Emmy. met a sad – and suitably unpleasant – death.
Tanya ends up hitting her head and drowning while trying to jump from a yacht to a boat to escape the crime scene.
Because of this, it ends up being the body that Daphne (Meghann Fahy) discovered floating in the ocean in the season opener.
Coolidge told Vulture in an interview posted Monday, creator Mike White told him “very soon” that Tanya will die in Season 2 — and Coolidge wasn’t exactly thrilled.
“I said, ‘Oh no! I think you are joking! Really?'” Coolidge recalled. “I tried to discourage him, but Mike is very strong. He said I would meet a tragic end and stuck to his guns.
Season 2 reveals that Greg Hunt (Jon Gries) — the man Tanya met, married and funded her cancer treatment in Season 1 of “The White Lotus” — plotted to kill her in Season 2. Greg enlisted a group of gay men to lure Tanya away from the luxury White Lotus Sicily resort on a yacht to kill her and take advantage of a loophole in the couple’s contractual agreement where Greg gets Tanya’s entire fortune if she dies.
Diligent and often short on ideas, Tanya manages to hatch the plot while on the yacht and tries to save herself by grabbing the weapon that was meant for her. What ensues is a hilarious, awkward, yet heartbreaking scene in which a spoiled princess nearly takes down a whole bunch of people.
“I’ve had a gun in another movie before, but somehow it was the first time I really felt out of control,” Coolidge told Vulture about what it was like to shoot the scene. “I really enjoyed this. When I filmed it, I felt like I could shoot myself.”
“Right before we shot the scene, Mike said, ‘Remember, Jennifer, Tanya is a lot more human than these guys. Just remember that killing something is hard for her,’” he said. “True. As unattractive as she is sometimes – she’s so strong and ugly – she’s not really terrible. Not like guys who are willing to take someone’s life as if nothing happened.”
White spoke about why he decided to give Tanya such an “operatic conclusion” in season 2 while speaking with HBO (above).
Note that at the end of Season 1, when Greg tells Tanya about his likely fatal health condition, Tanya responds by saying: “Over the years I’ve had all kinds of treatments. Death is the last thrilling experience we haven’t had.
White later explained that because of this version, he wanted to bring Tanya back “because she’s a great character … but maybe this is the journey for her. [in Season 2] … a journey to death.”
He also explained that the idea of someone else killing Tanya “seemed too tragic” and wanted her to “give her best reaction” and “somehow have some kind of victory over whoever was conspiring for to get rid of it”. .
“So it made me laugh to think that he’s going to want to take out all these cabals of assassins and that after he successfully does that, he dies this stupid death,” White said. “And I felt it so much Tanya.”
Coolidge also spoke to Vulture about how White used an aspect of his personality as inspiration for Tanya’s death. To read what he had to say about it, head over to Vulture to read Coolidge’s full interview.
