Jennifer Coolidge thanks ‘excited gay students’ in graduation speech

Leave it to Jennifer Coolidge to deliver a one-of-a-kind commencement address.

The White Lotus star returned to Boston’s Emerson College, which she attended before dropping out in the 1980s, to deliver some momentous remarks to 2025’s graduation class of nearly 1,000 students on Sunday. After thanking Emerson’s board of trustees, faculty, and President Jay Bernhardt, Coolidge joked to the crowd that she was grateful to be “speaking with some very excited gay students, some less excited hetero students, and hopefully some very eligible widowers.”

The Emmy winner noted that she grew up “just 40 minutes down the road,” in Norwell, Mass. The brief nature of her stints at nearby Emerson College and then the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City didn’t hinder her pursuit of proving herself a capable actress. Just a few years after her turn at Emerson, Coolidge landed her first screen role on a 1993 episode of Seinfeld called “The Masseuse” as the titular massage therapist, Jodi.

A veteran of the Los Angeles-based comedy troupe the Groundlings, Coolidge launched to stardom in 1999 with her breakout role as Jeanine Stifler, a.k.a. “Stifler’s mom,” in American Pie.

Coolidge reflected on her career, which has recently seen a major resurgence thanks to her role as Tanya McQuoid on the first two seasons of Mike White’s anthology drama The White Lotus.

“You have to find your own path, and you can’t perfectly plan it out from the beginning. And part of directing your life is just letting it unfold, so let it,” she told Emerson’s graduating class. “Personally, the best thing that happened to me is that it didn’t happen to me for a very long time. And it just didn’t happen early on. I think that is what kept me going with my unrealistic belief in myself and what was possible.”

Upon winning a Golden Globe in 2023 for her performance in The White Lotus‘ second season – which also saw her character’s demise – Coolidge credited the creator with saving her from a career slump. “I just want to say: Mike White, you have given me hope. You’ve given me a new beginning, even if this is the end, because you did kill me off,” she joked. “But it doesn’t matter because even if this is the end, you sort of changed my life in a million different ways.”

Continuing her speech to the crowd at Emerson’s Agganis Arena, Coolidge said, “I expected something great would really happen to me. In retrospect, it was the one and only thing I really had going for me. I had this thing inside of me telling me that I could achieve anything, anything in this world.” Adding in her characteristically deadpan style, “And there was just nothing to back it up.”

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Coolidge also noted that she’s “always wanted to do this,” referencing a video she posted to Instagram “during COVID” in 2020 in which she “pitched myself for this job.”

In the video, Coolidge delivers a rousing speech from Alexandre Dumas’ 1846 novel The Count of Monte Cristo about the vital importance of not giving up – to a table of dolls while wearing a graduation mortarboard on her head.

Watch Coolidge’s full commencement address above.