Jennifer Coolidge, the most iconic blonde of all time (yeah, I said it) has revealed that Ariana Grande helped pull her career out of “a dead zone”.
This was all revealed — where else — on an ep of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
Coolidge and Jimmy Fallon were chatting about the different celebrities who’ve done impressions of her iconic husky voice on his show.
“The first time I heard anyone do an impression of you was Ariana Grande,” said Fallon, before pulling up the video.
Personally it’s my idea of hell to watch people doing impressions of me, thus inherently revealing how they perceive me on international television, but that’s just me!
Jennifer Coolidge revealed that Ariana’s impression actually helped revitalise her career. Never let anyone tell you that talk shows have no cultural power.
“You should know that it was the beginning of a lot of cool things that happened for me because … I was going through a dead zone and not much was going on,” she said.
“Ariana did this imitation on your show and you encouraged her, and then this ball got rolling!”
She also said that a friend encouraged her to DM Ariana, which ended up with Coolidge starring in 2018’s pinnacle of pop culture, ‘thank u, next’.
“Then the next thing you know I was going over to her house getting fittings for ‘thank u, next’,” she said.
In case you don’t remember the legendary status of the ‘thank u, next’ video, it basically restarted the nostalgia-slash-reboot trend. There were references to Mean Girls, Bring It On, 30 Going on 30 and Legally Blonde. It also featured Kris Kardashian, Troye Sivan, Victoria Monét and a load of Ariana Grande’s Victorious co-stars.
Most importantly though, it starred Jennifer Coolidge reprising her role of Paulette from Legally Blonde, the performance which gave an entire generation the inimitable phrase “bend and snap”.
In the music vid, Jennifer Coolidge is dressed as an absolute Y2K fantasy, featuring a blonde curly half-up do, butterfly clips and bejewelled double denim. She is Y2K. The Depop girlies can only dream of being her.
Since the music video, Jennifer Coolidge’s career has skyrocketed. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role in The White Lotus and she also starred in the Oscar-nommed film Promising Young Woman.
It’s been rumoured that she’ll reprising her role in series two of The White Lotus so don’t fret: the Great Jennifer Coolidge Renaissance is far from over.
