Jennifer Coolidge on Her Love Affair With New Orleans

“I fell in love with New Year’s Eve a decade back, when a couple of girlfriends and I spontaneously went to a position called the Commander’s Palace in New Orleans. I’ve never ever been a large New Year’s person—I usually discover that it really is type of hit-or-overlook. This celebration was seeking the similar, primarily since all the places to eat all-around were being comprehensive. But then I got a random cellular phone connect with that a person experienced canceled their reservation and to come by proper away. 

We experienced pleasurable drinking wine and enjoying Creole-impressed hors d’oeuvres, but what I will hardly ever forget about is what took place proper just after we left. Some male was handing out these enormous bunches of silver balloons, big ample that it nearly felt like they could carry us. We tied them to the handlebars of our bicycles and discovered ourselves, at two in the early morning, driving down a street in the Back garden District—past grand historic mansions with ornate iron railings and amazing gardens—with these large bunches of balloons bobbing in the wind. It was a absolutely unplanned expertise that felt like a scene in a film: a moment of bliss that I would like absolutely everyone could have. 

And which is what New Orleans is all about, which is why I ended up shopping for a home there—you can not have a approach and close up undertaking one thing definitely intriguing and fun. I’ve experienced nights in which a marriage celebration took more than the bar I was at throughout a rainstorm and we all finished up dancing, soaking moist and among strangers, into the night time collectively. Or in which a random person begun playing the piano at a lounge and one more girl commenced singing and it wound up staying some of the most effective tunes I’ve at any time read. I imply, look—I you should not know a ton of cities wherever I would rather be out on my bicycle on New Year’s Eve than at a incredible occasion.” —As told to Scott Bay

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

This write-up appeared in the November 2022 concern of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the journal here.