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‘White Lotus’ Star Aimee Lou Wood Admits She ‘Wasn’t Being a Normal Person’ While Filming Season 3
The White Lotus has always featured eccentric characters, but season 3 star Aimee Lou Wood said that several of the cast members “lost their marbles” while shooting the series. The actress admitted that after spending seven months filming in Thailand, the experience began to take a toll.
“The thing that I craved the most was a kitchen,” Aimee, 31, told The Sunday Times in an article published on April 5. “I wanted to be able to walk to the shops and buy groceries and make food. My self-esteem wasn’t great because I wasn’t being a normal person. I wasn’t doing my own washing, folding my clothes. I started to feel like I was in The Sims.”
To make matters more complex, the Sex Education alum said that their on-screen personas began to merge with their real-life personalities. Aimee explained that at times the cast would realize they had just “regurgitated a character’s speech.”
“There was a bit of leakage. We were all accidentally Method,” Aimee shared with the publication. “Sometimes I feel like I can experience more of a range of emotions as a character in someone else’s story than as myself.”
The Stockport, Greater Manchester, native also admitted that after starring in Sex Education, which involved nudity, she remembered “feeling quite vulnerable,” but the experience with some of her female costars on the set of The White Lotus season 3 was much different.
“Down to Carrie [Coon] saying, ‘No, I’m getting mine out.’ When she goes topless in the pool, that is such a moment for [her character] Laurie,” Aimee said. “We were having these really helpful chats so I felt less alone, to the point where, when I knew the episode was coming out that had my sex scene in, I didn’t even think about it.”
Much like previous White Lotus stars Theo James and Leo Woodall, Mike White’s hit series has elevated Aimee’s level of fame. She confessed that she was a “superfan” of the show and even purposefully searched out the audition. However, the stardom has been a bit overwhelming at times.
“I have resistance to the buzz. I’ll stay at home and I won’t go to the party because I’m scared that I can’t handle my feelings of being overwhelmed,” Aimee noted. “Now that I’ve started to let it in a bit more, it’s like a bender: just do the thing, accept the tiredness, have fun and then process it later. It is a little bit of a British thing: we’re all embarrassed about saying, ‘This is a moment in my life.’”
Aimee’s character, Chelsea, quickly became a fan favorite with her sunny personality and ability to see the good in almost everyone, and those traits were things that Aimee connected with on a deeper level. Mike, 54, described the character as “the warmest” person to grace The White Lotus.
“She’s not cool, she’s not poised, she’s not posing like the others. She’s just experiencing. So I can just unmask in a weird way. I actually felt more myself as Chelsea because she was the goofy, nerdy side of me that sometimes I try to suppress,” Aimee went on. “Mike was really great at saying, ‘Don’t be afraid to be unlike everyone else. Unleash the freak!’”
The White Lotus season 3 finale airs on Sunday, April 6, at 9:00 p.m. ET on HBO and Max.
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