Jennifer Coolidge says she gained excessive weight during COVID-19 battle

Jennifer Coolidge revealed she gained weight excesively 'eating to death' during her battle with COVID-19.

The actress said she almost turned down her iconic role in White Lotus because she thought she was too heavy.

“I just didn’t want to be on camera that fat because of my excessive eating during COVID,” the 60-year-old told Page Six at the Gotham Awards on Monday night at Cipriani Wall Street.

Coolidge admitted that she gained the weight because “I thought we were all going to die, I really did, so I was just eating myself to death. Vegan pizzas, sometimes five or six in a day.”

The Legally Blonde star said she gave up on the role before her friend sat her down and talked some sense into her.

She added that she told her friend she was nixing the offer because “I’m fat right now. And she said, ‘Jennifer this is all you have! What the [expletive]?’ She was like, ‘These opportunities don’t come around, you idiot!'”

“We all need these friends,” she explained. “A lot of actors make huge mistakes, I don’t know why, we want a great moment to happen but then when it comes along we somehow talk ourselves out of it, I think that’s very typical of an actor, to screw it up for themselves but I had a great friend that stopped me from doing that.”