Haley Lu Richardson (‘The White Lotus’) on creator Mike White: ‘I wrote him a love letter, trying to get his attention’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
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Haley Lu Richardson was a fan of the first season of “The White Lotus” on HBO, but she had no idea what the future would have in store for her just a year later. In the Sicily-set installment, she plays Portia, the aimless assistant to Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) who’s told to “get lost” as soon as they arrive by Tanya’s husband Greg (Jon Gries). Watch the exclusive video interview above.
“I can’t remember the last time I’ve actually auditioned for a project that I really wanted and thrown myself at it and then gotten it,” Richardson gleefully admits, adding that “the times when I auditioned for something I just knew in the back of my head, there’s no way I’m going to be the one that they pick at the end of this. It’s just like the way the world works. But yeah, I auditioned for this show. I’ve been dreaming of working with Mike for years. I literally wrote him a love letter the year before the first ‘White Lotus’ happened. He is someone that I just love so much and wanted to work with. So, I wrote him a love letter, trying to get his attention. Maybe it worked! Actually, I don’t know if he ever even got that letter, because I forget if he responded,” she says. “It was just like this big dream that felt unattainable at the end of the day. And then when I actually got the call that, like Mike White was hiring me, it just didn’t feel real! I forgot what that had felt like to audition for something and then be the picked.”
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“The White Lotus” was created, written and directed by Emmy winner Mike White, following a week in the life of guests and employees at a fictional White Lotus luxury hotel in far-flung exotic locations. Originally intended as a six-part limited series, “The White Lotus” became such a huge critical and commercial sensation last year that HBO renewed it for round two. Last season was set among the swaying palm trees of Maui, while this season takes place against the backdrop of the ancient Ionian sunsets of Sicily. With each passing day, we learn more about the dysfunctional vacationers and the resort’s beleaguered staff members, culminating in White’s signature reveal of the identity of a mysterious dead body teased in each season’s opening scene.
After appearing together in Season 1, Coolidge and Gries returned along with Richardson, Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham, Adam DiMarco, Meghann Fahy, Beatrice Grannò, Tom Hollander, Sabrina Impacciatore, Emmy winner Michael Imperioli, Theo James, Aubrey Plaza, Will Sharpe, Simona Tabasco and Leo Woodall. The season opens on the beach as a dead body is discovered floating on the shore. We flash back a week earlier as the guests arrive, and it seems that there’s trouble in paradise Tanya banishes Portia (Richardson) to her room and Greg flees Sicily. A lonesome Tanya then encounters Quentin (Hollander), who befriends and lures her into his eclectic circle of high-end gays, building to a climactic twist as Tanya’s Sicilian adventure comes to a shocking end while Portia is left to pick up the pieces.
“Portia and Tanya’s storylines become like a thriller-horror genre type energy,” Richardson says about how the series takes a dark turn in the season finale. “But I didn’t really feel that it was a tonal shift or that I had to necessarily do anything different because no matter what the tone of the project is, the writing is so strong that all I really had to do was wholeheartedly believe everything that I was saying and feeling in all of these scenes. And then it would just come across pitiful or ironic or funny or annoying or scared, you know what I mean? It would just come across in the ways that they were meant to,” she explains, adding that “you just wholeheartedly, every scene, every moment, commit to the writing and where the character’s at. There were days even before, like scenes earlier on in the episodes before it really gets creepy and dire where Portia is already in a dire place. She’s so desperate and unfulfilled and disappointed and stuck and sad and pitiful that even though the tone of the whole show was bigger than that, and was different than that, and lighter and funnier, more ironic, more satirical, whatever, I just committed to what Portia was feeling and going through in that moment.”
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