Jennifer Coolidge on Her Love Affair With New Orleans

“I fell in love with New Year’s Eve a decade back, when a number of girlfriends and I spontaneously went to a area identified as the Commander’s Palace in New Orleans. I have never ever been a big New Year’s person—I always discover that it can be type of strike-or-miss. This celebration was searching the same, particularly since all the restaurants all over had been entire. But then I received a random mobile phone simply call that an individual experienced canceled their reservation and to occur by right absent. 

We experienced exciting ingesting wine and having fun with Creole-influenced hors d’oeuvres, but what I’ll never overlook is what happened proper after we remaining. Some guy was handing out these enormous bunches of silver balloons, significant sufficient that it nearly felt like they could raise us. We tied them to the handlebars of our bicycles and discovered ourselves, at two in the early morning, riding down a street in the Backyard District—past grand historic mansions with ornate iron railings and extraordinary gardens—with these huge bunches of balloons bobbing in the wind. It was a fully unplanned knowledge that felt like a scene in a movie: a moment of bliss that I would like every person could have. 

And that’s what New Orleans is all about, which is why I finished up buying a property there—you can not have a system and close up performing anything definitely interesting and entertaining. I have experienced evenings where a marriage celebration took in excess of the bar I was at in the course of a rainstorm and we all ended up dancing, soaking damp and amongst strangers, into the night time with each other. Or the place a random man started off playing the piano at a lounge and a further woman begun singing and it wound up getting some of the ideal audio I’ve at any time heard. I signify, look—I never know a large amount of metropolitan areas the place I would alternatively be out on my bike on New Year’s Eve than at a incredible celebration.” —As told to Scott Bay

Jennifer Coolidge stars in time 2 of The White Lotus, airing October 30 on HBO. 

This short article appeared in the November 2022 concern of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the journal right here.