Jennifer Coolidge recently reflected on the mutual love between herself and her LGBTQ+ fans.

On Friday, April 25, the White Lotus star attended the grand opening of The Tryst, an LGBTQ+ focused resort in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. On the event’s red carpet, more than one outlet asked Coolidge about her connection to the queer community.

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“I think maybe heterosexual people are more self-conscious,” the Emmy winner told People when asked what she loves most about her LGBTQ+ fanbase. “I think gay men and gay women just let it, just let loose and have a blast. They know how to have a really, really good, really fun time. They’re really original, you know. They’re, I don’t know, just a superior group of people.”

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As Pride.com’s Ricky Cornish noted on the Tryst carpet, queer audiences have embraced Coolidge’s campy, over-the-top comedic performances stretching all the way back to her breakthrough role as “Stifler’s mom” in 1999’s American Pie, as well as her roles in director Christopher Guest’s hilarious ensemble comedies and the Legally Blonde films. But her turn as wealthy basket case Tanya McQuoid in the first two seasons of HBO’s The White Lotus arguably cemented her position as a queer icon. Along with multiple awards — including two Emmys and a Golden Globe — her Season 2 storyline involving a nefarious cadre of “high-end gays” birthed multiple memes.  

Coolidge told Cornish that the love is “very, very mutual.”

“I feel like I joined the LGBTQ+ community before, I mean when I was young,” she said. “We were all attracted to each other for the same thing.”

“I was kind of lost, you know, as a young kid,” she explained. “Most of my buddies are gay men and gay women too. We just all felt like we were the same tribe. I could go on forever about how much it’s improved my life. If it hadn’t happened and if I hadn’t met everyone from the gay community that I know, I think my life would be nothing — and I mean nothing without it.”

Speaking to LGBTQ Nation sibling site Queerty, the GLAAD Media Award winner also talked up the queer community’s resilience.

“I think the gays are the toughest breed of human beings,” she said. “Usually the beginning of their lives have been tough, and they’ve had to endure all sorts of [hardships] and suffering, just feeling like they’re not fitting in, and I think the insecure kids growing up could be incredibly cruel and judgmental [to them.] So, I think they have been strong from the very beginning, and they have done an incredible job.”

Coolidge said she admires her queer friends’ accomplishments just as much as her fans admire her.

“I mean, just about all my friends are gay and they’re all doing really cool stuff,” she explained. “I always feel like such a loser when I’m around them because they’re such achievers. And I guess they always felt like they had to compensate [for something.] But I’m just surprised at how consistent that sort of scenario is—I don’t have any gay friends who aren’t doing a hundred things, I really don’t! And you really can’t say that about a lot of groups of people.”

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