Jennifer Coolidge Waited 10 Years for Ryan Murphy to Cast Her – Even After He Rented Her House for ‘AHS’
Actor Jennifer Coolidge was pretty stunned that it took filmmaker Ryan Murphy a decade before he cast her in the Netflix series The Watcher, even after he rented her home for a previous season in American Horror Story.
She recently joked about how even though Murphy used her New Orleans house, he didn’t consider her for even a small role even if she was in her own yard during filming. Needless to say, she’s “thrilled” to be included in Murphy’s latest project, The Watcher.
Jennifer Coolidge was shut out from ‘AHS’ even in her own home
During a recent interview, Coolidge said she was thrilled to finally be included in a Ryan Murphy project like The Watcher. “It was sort of a riveting thing that Ryan was asking me to do this. I never get offered these sort of scary parts,” she told IMDb. “He rented my house and used it for American Horror Story down in New Orleans, but even if I was in the yard… he somehow made sure he wasn’t around to give me a little part. So here I am 10 years later, thrilled!”
She also described working for Muphy in a single sentence. “Most daring to cross the line and make you feel things you have never felt before.”
Would Jennifer Coolidge consider joining ‘AHS’?
For Coolidge, The Watcher is just the beginning of getting to work with Murphy if she has it her way. “Yes, of course,” she replied to E! News’ question if she’d consider AHS.
Coolidge who rose to fame playing quirky, fun-loving characters said roles, like she had in The Watcher, are exciting for her. “I don’t get to play a part like that,” she said.
She added, “I haven’t been asked to be in one of these sort of creepy stories before. I love characters like this where they’re very shiny on the outside and put on a really good show—act excited about you and the house she’s going to sell you…and then [there are] glimmers of unhappiness and unease. It was just many, many things to play.”
‘The Watcher’ co-star Naomi Watts has ‘deep respect’ for Jennifer Coolidge’s work
Co-star Naomi Watts described what it was like to work with Coolidge in The Watcher. “I have deep respect for her and her work,” Watts told Digital Spy. “I’ve just always admired it, and you can imagine my face when I heard that she was going to be part of the cast, and, particularly, an old friend. So I knew that I would have scenes with her.”
“But every scene we shot, there’s just so much surprise and discovery,” Watts added. “She just is golden. Every time she improvises… I loved it when she just went off and did her own thing. The hardest part about working with Jennifer Coolidge is keeping a straight face, you know?”
Watts had great chemistry with Coolidge. “Well, I can’t give anything away, as you know. I’m sworn to secrecy,” she said about The Watcher. “You want to leave it to the audience to discover. But, yes, there’s definitely something to it, and I appreciate that you say ‘great chemistry’, because I felt that we had that on the day.
