Jennifer Coolidge Loves Hanging With ‘Riff Raff’ After ‘White Lotus’

Although Emmy-winning actor Jennifer Coolidge misses The White Lotus terribly, she’s glad that directors are seeing her potential for playing characters dramatically different from the effervescent Tanya McQuoid.

Director Dito Montiel certainly gets Coolidge’s expansive range, which is why the filmmaker cast her in the lead role of Ruth in the dark crime comedy Riff Raff, which debuts on digital streaming via premium video on demand on Friday.

In Riff Raff, Coolidge’s Ruth is the ex-wife of Vincent (Ed Harris), a former hitman who has found peace with a new wife, Sandy (Gabriel Union) and son, DJ (Miles J. Harvey) in a remote abode far away from the rat race.

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But when Vincent’s son, Rocco (Lewis Pullman) shows up at his estranged dad’s house along with his very pregnant girlfriend Marina (Emanuela Postacchini) and his passed-out mom, Ruth, the former mobster’s past starts to come back to haunt him. It seems that Rocco has seriously upset Vincent’s former crime partner, Lefty (Bill Murray) and his hitman Lonnie (Pete Davidson) — and they want payback.

Ruth, as we discover from the get-go, is a tough-talking, F-bomb-slinging and booze-chugging East Coaster who will tell you like it is whether you like it or not.

“I’ll be really honest. I was extremely surprised that I was being offered the role,” Coolidge told me in a recent phone conversation. “It was Dito Montiel’s idea and I just was surprised because I don’t get offered parts like that. It’s interesting. The movie business and the television business are strange. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been offered the exact same role over and over.”

Coolidge — whose first screen credit came in a 1993 episode of Seinfeld — has been fortunate to amass more than 100 screen roles in the past three decades, but admits that she had long stretches where she felt stuck.

“I went through a whole decade — I think it was after Best in Show — where a lot of trophy wife roles were being offered to me,” Coolidge recalled. “I turned down a lot of them, thinking, ‘Something else will come up.’ [They were all for] a certain type of woman, this generic, trophy wife sort of thing.”

Ruth in Riff Raff, though, is anything but a trophy wife.

“I know a lot of Ruths. Growing up, I knew them,” said Coolidge, who hails from Boston. “Ruth is pretty rough [in Riff Raff], but I knew that type of woman, quite a few that were rough around the edges with no sort of self-examination at all. Someone who’s just hanging on by a string.”

Despite Her Extensive Improv Experience, Jennifer Coolidge Stuck To Script In ‘Riff Raff’

As an alum of the legendary improvisational Los Angeles comedy troupe The Groundlings, Jennifer Coolidge has had the opportunity to put her improv skills to work in films like actor-director Christopher Guest’s documentary-style comedy gems Best in Show, A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration.

And while Riff Raff has dark comedic elements woven within the murder and mayhem that goes on in the film, Coolidge said she mostly followed screenwriter John Pollono’s lead.

“There’s very little improv. All my funny lines were really written by John Pollono,” Coolidge recalled. “I screened [Riff Raff] at the Toronto Film Festival for the first time and I didn’t remember hearing lies that I came up with. I’m so glad I got that role because I don’t know if I’ll ever get that kind of role again. There were physical things that I [improvised] that weren’t written in the script but those were mostly John’s lines.”

While Best in Show — Guest’s 2000 dog show comedy that also stars Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Jane Lynch, Michael McKean and the late Fred Willard — resulted in a slew of trophy wife characters offers in its wake, Coolidge is still forever grateful for the role.

“It was a good job because the actual industry got to see me because I hadn’t really done much before that,” Coolidge recalled. “I had American Pie [as Stiffler’s Mom] under my belt and Legally Blonde was around the same time as Best in Show — maybe a little bit after. Best in Show helped me because people you know people love Christopher Guest’s films and that was the first one I ever got to do.”

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Not only did Best in Show allow Coolidge to spotlight her improv skills, but it put her on the path for much bigger things in the future, including the first two seasons of The White Lotus and now, Riff Raff.

“People in the industry liked [Best in Show], so I think it got me a lot of auditions,” Coolidge said. “I loved playing the part, and even while I did play a couple of trophy wives in different films, it helped get me to where I am now, where I can be in a gangster film. I’m glad that things are getting more varied as I get older … I’m thrilled I get to play a bad lady for once!”

Rated R, Riff Raff is available on digital streaming on a variety of outlets, including AppleTV, Fandango at Home and Prime Video.

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