Jennifer Coolidge was among a handful of fellow A-list stars starring in the new movie Riff Raff — and it was Pete Davidson who piqued her curiosity… in the best way.
“He was sort of the most mysterious of everybody,” Coolidge exclusively told Us Weekly, recalling one particular moment they shared while filming the crime-comedy. “I had an intense scene with him. But the thing that I keep thinking about is we were all in this house. It was freezing out. It was so friggin’ cold when we were making this movie. And, you know, it was December in the woods of New Jersey, and it was just intense. And I’ll never forget, I was looking out the window —Pete and I had a scene to do —and I see this massive car coming up this very steep hill where we were filming and it was icy. And I was like, ‘What the hell is that?’ And I realized it was a Rolls Royce. And it pulls up. And of course I was like, ‘Who is in that Rolls Royce?’ And it was Pete Davidson.”
Calling the moment “very unpredictable” and one she “couldn’t have calculated,” Coolidge confessed that Davidson is someone who keeps people on their toes.
“I wouldn’t have guessed [that] would’ve happened. I mean, he does his own thing,” she said. “I feel like after I shot my scenes with him I still don’t really know who he is. But he is very exciting. You know, there’s some people you don’t really know what’s going on.”
Davidson and Coolidge, of course, are just two of the big names sharing the screen in Riff Raff. The film follows former criminal Vincent (Ed Harris) as his ordinary life gets turned upside down when his family shows up unexpectedly for a reunion-turned-nightmare. Coolidge portrays Ruth, Vincent’s often inebriated and “self destructive” ex-wife. Gabrielle Union, Lewis Pullman, Bill Murray and Emanuela Postacchini also star.
Jennifer Coolidge and Lewis Pullman Courtesy of Lionsgate
“I’ve been very lucky and I’ve gotten to work with some really cool people. But I have to say, I really did keep pinching myself when I was there filming,” Coolidge told Us. “I couldn’t believe that I was able to work with these people that I’ve admired. Some of them are just incredibly famous dramatic actors.”
Coolidge praised onscreen ex-husband Harris for his extraordinary “body of work” and Murray, who’s “been hilarious for so long” but shows off a different side of his talents in the role of aging mafioso Leftie. “I thought he was frightening,” she explained. “And what a great opportunity for him to show how well he can do that.”
The White Lotus star also gushed over the up-and-coming cast, calling Postacchini, Pullman and Miles J. Harvey “superstars” in the making. “It was all quite intimidating to be honest,” she confessed.
Coolidge said that despite any initial anxieties, there was plenty of time to get comfortable with her castmates. Filming at a small cabin in New Jersey during the cold winter months, the costars had no choice but to mingle in close proximity.
“It was freezing cold, so we had to spend very sort of intimate moments inside,” Coolidge told Us with a laugh. “There wasn’t a lot of places [to go]. The set was sort of upstairs, and so there wasn’t really a lot of space to hang out. So we were all sometimes in the same room that was very, very small in these little director’s chairs. It was sort of forced intimacy, which I’m very glad happened because I really got to talk to them [and] got to know them well.”
Coolidge noted that production on Riff Raff was “very quick,” with the shoot lasting just less than one month. But even those “freezing” temperatures and short filming windows couldn’t damper her excitement to be a part of such a special project — one that let her break out of her comfort zone.
Riff Raff is available to rent and purchase on demand now.
With reporting by Andrea Simpson
