Alexandra Daddario
OF ‘THE WHITE LOTUS’ ON HBO, HBO MAX AND HBO CANADA
In playing a honeymooner at the title Hawaiian hotel in “The White Lotus,” you work with writer-director Mike White, wellknown for his satirical bent. How did you find your collaboration with him?
I hope he would feel the same way, but I feel like we got along swimmingly and sort of understood each other right off the bat ... and I attribute that to having some similar view of the world. He’s hilarious and real and dark, and he has a really interesting perspective on what it means to be human. I think there’s a lot of humor that comes from the problems we think we have while the world is spinning around us, and he did a great
job of portraying that in the show.
Jake’s a lovely, lovely guy and a great family man; he’s got a wonderful wife and two wonderful kids, and he had to be away from them for two months for this, so that’s very hard. The fact that the two of us worked together so closely allowed us to lean on each other, but I also felt that with a
lot of the rest of the cast.
How did the coronavirus pandemic affect how you did your work on “The White Lotus”?
This was (filmed at) the end of last year, so it was pandemic time, for sure. Especially after not working and being frightened for all kinds of reasons, the idea of going away and being on a beach for two months sounded wonderful. It had its own challenges, because you also were quarantined, and you had to be very aware of your own health and that of the people around
you. It certainly was an adventure that I felt very privileged to have.