In the second half of our The White Lotus Season 2 video coverage, we find out more about creator/writer Mike White’s sun-dappled social satire/murder mystery set in Sicily.
The guests this round are finance bro Cameron Babcock (Theo James) and his wife, stay-at-home mom/true crime fan Daphne (Meghann Fahy); a frustrated young assistant Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) yearning to embrace life after lockdown; and Albie DiGrasso (Adam DiMarco), an idealistic recent college grad traveling with his less enlightened dad and grandfather.
“You think they’re a couple that has everything,” James tells TV Insider. “Quickly as the season evolves, you realize there’s more to it than that. They’re very complex. There’s a lot of dangerous toxicity there. On one hand, they deeply love each other, but they’re also playing games with each other at all points in their marriage. They kind of get off on those games with each other and with others around them.”
Fahy “can’t be convinced” that Daphne, Cameron, Harper (Aubrey Plaza), and Ethan (Will Sharpe) don’t know this vacation is not going to be fun for them, “especially ’cause Harper’s not shy about how she feels at first, and then she really makes an effort. [Daphne and Cameron] immediately notice how strange it is that she’s sort of behaving differently.”
“I think they take a lot of solace” in their comfort, despite the apparently impending petty games, Fahy says of her and James’ married duo. “They have an ease that other people are probably a little bit jealous of.” Time will tell if their relationship stays worthy of envy (if it ever was).
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Richardson tells us that Portia couldn’t be more miserable on this Italian getaway her boss, Jennifer Coolidge‘s Tanya, forced her to attend (and then subsequently sent her packing). “She’s deeply unfulfilled and desperate for something to come around and shake her up,” Richardson says.
In his own way, DiMarco’s Albie is also begrudgingly on this trip. “He’s there to keep the peace in his family,” he tells us of Albie’s downbeat dad (Michael Imperioli) and his over-flatulent, accident-prone, and creepy grandpa (F. Murray Abraham). Albie and Portia’s connection could help make this time in Sicily less of a drag.
We also meet the locals: Valentina (Sabrina Impaccitore) the hotel manager who’s trying to maintain the property’s elegant vibe by chasing out Lucia (Simona Tabasco), a sex worker, and her friend Mia (Beatrice Grannò), who dreams of being a professional musician.
“At the beginning, I was a bit embarrassed to play that part of the character that was so repulsive,” Impaccitore says of her uptight hotel manager. “But Mike asked me to go in that direction in an extreme way. He said, ‘the more bitchy you are, the more it’s going to work.’ When I finally arrived to the other part of the character, I could totally feel that he was so right.”
Tabasco says she felt a lot of “freedom” in Lucia’s clothes and aura but also teases a deeper side of her. Granno says Mia and Lucia “could be one,” adding, “they kind of flip from one side to another. They affect each other a lot.” Mia will question her “innocence” through the course of the story as Lucia questions her own life.
Check out the full video interview with the cast of The White Lotus Season 2, above. And make sure to check out our first video, where we talk to returning star Coolidge and new cast members Plaza and Imperioli.
The White Lotus, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO