Every Celebrity Tahani Has Name-Dropped on The Good Place
Carter Sullivan You don’t have to watch The Good Place for long to realize that Tahani Al-Jamil is more than a hot, rich fraud with legs for days. She’s also a relentless name-dropper. But when Princess Diana is your godmother and Beyoncé is your best friend, can you really blame a girl for bragging?
Again and again on The Good Place, Tahani outdid herself with her ability to wedge a famous name into nearly every conversation. What follows is a complete list of Tahani’s many humblebrags in the NBC sitcom’s four seasons. When the show takes its final curtain call on Thursday night, Tahani will surely claim to know at least a few more celebs oh-so well, so we’ll update this list after the finale to catalogue them too.
Royalty (and Big Ben, somehow)
• “You know, this really reminds me of my time in Vietnam, picking up mortar shells with my godmother, Diana. Doesn’t really matter what she’s a princess of. It’s not really important.”
• “When I turned 18, I knelt in front of Princess Grace’s dress mausoleum and I swore to uphold the hostess code.”
• “I’m going to tell you the same thing I told Pippa Middleton right before we went paragliding in Gibraltar: ‘Let’s go.’”
• “Oh, it was a perfect evening. Princess Stephanie was there, as were Posh and Becks. You know, International Sophisticate magazine gave us five Gwyneths.”
• (On her dresses and jewels:) “I gave them all to Goodwill. [Pause.] That’s what I called Prince William — since he’d married a commoner, I assumed he’d know some needy people they could go to.”
• “In the words of Princess Kate after we came back from our shopping trip in Ibiza, ‘There’s a lot to unpack here.’”
• Tahani: “It really is the most incredible chime I’ve ever heard, and that is coming from someone whose godfather is the most famous clock in the world.” Chidi: “Is Big Ben somehow your godfather?”
Spiritual Leaders
• “It’s not about who you know, enlightenment comes from within. The Dalai Lama texted me that.”
Hollywood
• “Believe it or not, I actually found myself in a very similar situation a few years ago, except, in that instance, Michael was Javier Bardem and the Bad Place was Vanessa Redgrave’s panic room.”
• “I have to say, this neighborhood that you’ve built is truly a masterpiece, the likes of which I’ve never seen. And I’ve been to Johnny Depp’s private bird sanctuary.”
• “Hang out with Johnny Depp long enough, and you become pretty good at lying. Like, ‘No, your whole thing isn’t exhausting at all!’”
• “You know, I used to do quite a cutting impression of an ex-boyfriend of mine from the States. He’d be all like, ‘Hey, I’m so rich, I have nine houses, I’m Leonardo DiCaprio.’”
• “I also dabbled in some other professions. I was a model, a museum curator, an ‘It’ girl, and — oh, I was Baz Luhrmann’s muse for a while. That was quite fun.”
• “I actually dabbled in a bit of acting after university. Although mostly I just stood around while Baz Luhrmann just threw glitter on me.”
• “My only real goal was to snog Ryan Gosling at the Met Ball. Which I did. Couple of times, actually.”
• “The only trolley I’ve ever been on is James Franco’s ironic trolley. It travels backwards from his penguin grotto to his garage of adult tricycles.”
• “I mean, I’ve dallied below my station. I once had a brief fling with a non-famous Hemsworth brother, but even Larry Hemsworth had more status than Jason.” [Editor’s note: In season three, Tahani sees Larry Hemsworth again back on Earth. She says hi by name-dropping his brothers, then apologizes: “Larry, it’s lovely to see you. Sit down, let’s catch up. How are Chris and Liam and Luke? Sorry, no I won’t mention your brothers again.”]
• “Sure, Ben Affleck told me he’d matured as an artist after he directed Argo, but then, right on schedule, it was, ‘Guess what, Tahani, I’m gonna be Batman.’”
• “That roast was the meanest thing I’ve ever seen, and I once saw a waiter bring Russell Crowe the wrong tea.”
• Eleanor: “The real buzzkill whose name I can never remember. Keeblers … car … Kyra Sedgwick?” Tahani: “Oh, I love her. Dear friend of mine.”
• “You know, one of my shyest friends — I won’t say his name to preserve his privacy — but he found my presence so comforting that he asked me to co-host his TV show, Anderson Cooper 360.”
• “Quvenzhané Wallis and Stephen Hawking in the same room discussing me? Guess they must’ve made up.”
• “Maggie Smith is my godmother.”
• [On an MRI machine] “It’s roughly the same size as Nicole Kidman’s cryogenic anti-aging chamber, and I’ve never had a problem in there.”
• “I deleted all my celebrity contacts from my mobile. Good-bye, Bono; good-bye, The Edge; good-bye The Edge’s real phone number that even Bono doesn’t have.”
• “I once played a drinking game with Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively at their macrobiotic farm with a particularly robust batch of homemade kombucha.”
• “I enjoy American football. I actually dated a player once, but he wasn’t my type, so I set him up with my friend Gisele… Bündchen.”
•“I need you to act as my bodyguard, like my friend Kevin Costner in that movie where he was a bodyguard, The Bodyguard.”
•“All my life this money has been a weight around my neck, like the Heart of the Ocean necklace my friend James Cameron once gave me.”
•“If you love someone, set them free. A good friend and yoga pupil Sting, no last initial, told me that.”
• “There are plenty of other people I could help, like my good friend Ben Affleck and his crippling addiction to back tattoos — or my other good friend Matt Damon and his crippling addiction to my friend Ben Affleck!”
• “I haven’t had a pet since Barbra Streisand gave me one of her cloned Siamese cats and it killed itself.”
• “I haven’t met a more perfect couple since I set up Drake with Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”
• “Well, I lost that battle with Robert Downey Jr., and I’ll be damned if I lose it with you.”
• “I haven’t encountered this much resistance since I tried to get Timothée Chalamet to go out into the sun.”
• “I shall go on the attack, just like six of the eight Game of Thrones characters who were based on me would do.”
• “In 2007, Blake Lively invited me to a birthday party held for Leonardo DiCaprio aboard Paul Allen’s mega-yacht.”
• “I’ve thrown my fair share of disastrous gatherings. Remind me to tell you someday about Timothée Chalamet’s bar mitzvah.”
• Tahani: “I was once in Portofino with Bruno Mars, LeBron James, and Dr. Ruth Westheimer.” Eleanor: “We don’t have time for this right now, babe.” Tahani: “Fine. Long story short, LeBron performed a successful tracheotomy, the song won multiple Grammys, and everyone was really happy.”
• “If I can convince Dr. Ruth not to sue Bruno Mars over songwriting credit on ‘Uptown Funk,’ I can handle this.”
• “Ironically, that’s exactly what Vin Diesel asked me when Dwayne Johnson refused to appear in The Fast and the Furious 9.”
• “Karlie Kloss did like me! I knew it!”
Pop Stars
• “I haven’t been this upset since my good friend Taylor was rudely upstaged by my other friend Kanye, who was defending my best friend, Beyoncé.”
• “I am an expert at mediating conflict, like when my friends Scary, Sporty, Posh, and Baby had an issue with my other friend, Archbishop Desmond Tutu.”
• Eleanor talking about Tahani: “Yesterday, she told me that she was Taylor Swift’s best friend, but Taylor Swift wasn’t her best friend.”
• “There’ll be Fergies a-plenty in the Good Place.”
• “Our story begins when I ran into Robbie Williams, Heidi Klum, and the remaining members of Fifth Harmony at the Dolce & Gabbana spring show … ”
• “I used to have a breakup routine when a relationship ended: Champagne and Alanis Morissette. Not the actual singer. I’d just listen to her albums at my friend Adele’s house.”
• “This may be a tougher challenge than I thought, like when I tried to teach Taylor Swift how to dance. [Pause.] The longest four years of my life.”
The One Percent
• “Anyone up for a little icebreaker? You know, I once did trust falls with Barry Diller and it was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.”
• “I am going to tell you the same thing that I told Mark Zuckerberg before he ousted Eduardo Saverin: You are smart, you are capable, and the time has come to hit ‘unfriend.’ I also told Mark to lose the ‘the.’ Just ‘Facebook.’ That was me.”
• “Reach for the stars, as I said to my good friend Elon Musk — and then he shot his car in space! What a weird creep, why was I friends with him?”
• “I’ve been through worse. Once, at Elon Musk’s birthday party, I was seated between Silvio Berlusconi and Elon Musk.”
