Jennifer Coolidge can thank The White Lotus for more than just a career renaissance.

“Even though I play a complete weirdo in White Lotus, cute guys come up to me,” she told The Sunday Times on Sunday. “This is far better than American Pie because people were really sad about Tanya falling off a boat. These men like you better because they feel that you went through something. That show really upped my game!”

The raunchy 1999 teen comedy gave Coolidge the first huge break of her career, with the role of Jeanine Stifler, or the buxom, seductive mother of Seann William Scott‘s Steve Stifler known simply as “Stifler’s mom.”

“Look, I got a lot of benefits out of Stifler’s Mom — believe me…. They might be over now, but once in a while you still get a Stifler’s mom thing,” she joked. The last American Pie franchise film Coolidge appeared in was American Reunion, in 2012. It was her odd and unpredictable Tanya McQuoid, who traveled first to Hawaii and then on to Italy for The White Lotus‘ second season, that has ushered in both a career renaissance and a dating renaissance for Coolidge.

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Tanya met her untimely end at the close of the show’s second season, a turn of events that Coolidge told Entertainment Weekly in 2022 that she tried talking series creator Mike White out of writing (“I said to him jokingly throughout the filming, I’m like, ‘You don’t have to, you know? Tanya doesn’t have to die'”).

But die she did, and The White Lotus season 3 is proceeding without her. But Coolidge is still grateful to White, remarking, “Do I think any other director would have chosen me for Tanya? Probably not.”

Coolidge won an Emmy for her performance on the show last year, taking the opportunity to thank White and joke again about Tanya’s shocking demise: “He says I’m definitely dead so I’m going along with it.” 

Even though Coolidge doesn’t star on the new season of The White Lotus, she’s happy to give anyone who asks her unvarnished opinions about what should happen — especially if it involves her character’s unsavory husband, Greg (Jon Gries).

“My hope for Jon is that he’s not finished with Greg,” she told Jeremy Allen White in 2023. “I hope there’s some comeuppance for evil Greg. I think he should, I don’t know, end up in a meat-grinding machine.” When Greg did indeed turn up on the new season, Coolidge remarked, “As you know, [actor] Jon Gries has shown up…. I hope he gets it! I hope they do something terrible to him.”

The White Lotus season 3 airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and streams on Max.