Adam DiMarco

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Adam DiMarco’s new breakout role on HBO’s critically acclaimed series The White Lotus is one that solidifies him as an actor to watch.

“Can you hear me? Can you see me?” my computer screen asks.

I look up from the phone that’s in my lap to see Adam DiMarco smiling gently at me. He’s dressed in a hoodie and sitting in a comfortable living room, worried that the blanket on the couch behind him looks messy. I tell him not to worry, the video of this call is between me, him and the gods of Zoom.

If you have a pulse and access to HBO you’re likely watching season two of The White Lotus. After winning multiple Emmys for its first season, the show has returned with a bigger (and I’d argue, even better) second season.

Of the many entangled storylines, one that has managed to cut through the noise on social media, is the tale of the character, Albie DiGrasso, played by Adam DiMarco. Albie is on a family trip with his father and grandfather. Whilst staying at the luxury Sicilian resort he falls into complicated relationships with various women. Twitter isn’t sure whether to love this character or hate this character. I can tell you firsthand however, that you’re going to love Adam DiMarco.

He’s excited to talk about the show and gushes over his co-stars and the force that is Mike White. He’s polite, and incredibly well spoken. Taking lengthy pauses to formulate a good and thoughtful answer to each and every one of my questions (so long a pause in fact that when I was editing the transcript later I was worried the audio had cut out). He really does seem to be a nice guy – like a really, truly nice person. And those people are all too rare.

In conversation with 1883 Magazine, Adam DiMarco talks about how it feels to act in incredibly cringe-y scenes, overcoming his intimidation heading into production and that jaw dropping scene from episode five (you know the one).

I am so excited to be talking to you today. I am a huge fan of The White Lotus.

Me too.

I loved the first season so I was really excited for season two to be released. And honestly, I feel like it’s even better than the first season somehow.

Oh, that’s very nice.

So, I’m loving watching it. My greatest cross to bear is that HBO sent me the first five episodes.

Did you watch them!?

Oh, I’ve watched them all very fast. But I have no one to entertain a discourse with now.

We can talk about it. Do you want to talk about it?

Um… yeah!

I’ve seen the first five as well.

Five is the most fucked up one. That one was crazy.

I know! And you’ve been having to deal with this for so long. Alone.

I have just been alone in my apartment.

I just watched five the other night. And I couldn’t sleep after even though I knew what was gonna happen. They executed it so well.

My greatest grievance right now, aside from Jack, is you. I don’t know whether I should hate you or love your character. I am so torn.

I love that. I mean, I see a lot of that on Twitter as well, where people hate Albie one week and love him the next. People are very split. I’m getting a lot of mixed messages. Same with Haley Lu.

But that’s what’s so great about the show. And that’s what’s so great about Mike’s writing. He writes these characters, so nuanced and so truthful, that by the end of the season, you’ve seen these characters in so many different lights, and you get this full picture of a character. So I would say try to wait until the finale before you really make any judgments on a character. But yeah, they all have likable, and unlike unlikable moments, which is true for anyone. So that’s just a testament to the writing.

Something that features heavily in the show, especially in this season are a lot of themes surrounding sex and sexual politics. Which, to me, is just a fancy way of saying that it’s really cringy, especially with your character. [Both laugh]

One thing that I really admired about your performance is, like you were saying, you bring so much nuance to it. Albie is this nice guy, but he also has these “nice guy” cringe elements. Kind of like those guys who wear shirts that say I’m a feminist, but by wearing these shirts, they’re not actually supporting women a lot of the time, a lot of the time the goal is about appealing to women. At least, that’s how your character seems to me in some scenes. Especially when you have lines like, “I’m attracted to wounded birds.” That seems kind of predatory, but then at the same time, Albie doesn’t seem all that much like a predator.

Yeah. That’s a good point. I mean, if a bird flew into your window right now, and you saw it happen, would you not go outside and try to nurse it back to health?

Yeah, I mean, logically I totally see how that adds up. You want to help people. But then also being attracted to hurt things is kind of weird.

It is a weird thing to say to someone on a date. I think with a lot of the writing, you can take lines to mean two or three different things. And then everyone’s just kind of projecting their own life experience onto it, which is why you get all these different perspectives on these characters, which is so great. Sometimes an audience member might see something inside themselves that they’re not fully comfortable with reflected back at them in the character or the writing. And that can be a reason that they don’t like someone, like they think “Hey, I don’t like that part of myself too”. Or they may see a part of themselves they love in a character and that’s why they’re endeared to them. I think it’s great when TV and film is executed in such a way that different audience members have different takeaways – that it’s not just a one note telling of what’s going on.

In a lot of superhero films, it’s like, this is the good guy, this is the bad guy. And you know exactly how to feel the whole time. And I love watching those movies, they’re very comforting and entertaining. But sometimes it’s good to watch something like this where your perspective is being challenged.

I think it’s really important to challenge your worldview. It’s obviously really easy to understand black and white. But the gray is so much more interesting. And that’s why shows like The White Lotus are so compelling and so universally appealing, because everyone can see a little bit of themselves in all of the characters. And that’s also why it’s uncomfortable to view it too sometimes, because you’re seeing yourself in it.

Yeah, and the world isn’t really black and white either. It’s just a more accurate representation of reality. I mean, at least to me, I think everything is gray. I can never really understand a situation until I hear both sides of it. And even then, the truth is always lying somewhere in the middle of the two stories.

I wanted to ask you a little bit about your journey with the material for this show. Can you tell me about the audition process, to getting the scripts, to the production itself?

Yeah, I had called my manager a week before kind of just questioning things and questioning career things. And more so from a place of: Is there anything I could be doing better? Should I be taking this class? What could I do? And he basically was like, just be patient. I have an audition coming for you that I think you’d be a great fit for, it’s The White Lotus season two. And I was like, “Oh, wow, I want to nail that one.”

As an actor, whenever I do an audition, I try to forget about it afterwards. Because more often than not, you’re not right for it. You’re not going to be right for every character you read for. And that’s fine. There’s so many people reading for every role. But for this one, after I taped it, I just kind of felt, and I don’t always feel this way, just a weird connection with it. So, I asked my manager to please just make sure casting watches it. I had a good feeling about it. I really related to this character. You know, he’s half Italian. Our names are similar. Both of us have two capital letters in the last name. The first names both start with an A. That stuff’s just such a coincidence that I was trying not to read into it too hard. But I was like, this would be so cool.

Then casting liked it. And then I had a Zoom callback when I was in Toronto for the Christmas holidays last year. And I did the callback and we just read the scenes once. And that was that. It was painless.

Sounds like things moved very fast.

Yeah. And then I freaked out, obviously, when I found out that I booked it. They sent us the first six scripts and I just devoured them because the writing was so good. It was such a treat to read. That’s also rare. Or it hasn’t been rare for me up until this point. It kind of read like an amazing novel or something. And I got so invested in the characters and the storylines – I needed to know what happened. And so it was like, torturous waiting for the seventh episode to arrive, because I you know, I just needed to know who died.

Then getting to Sicily, just talking with Mike about the character. He let us also bring ourselves to it. He wasn’t overly precious about his writing. He still allowed us room to ad lib, and improvise – respectfully, obviously – around the story he was telling. And even if it didn’t make it into the final cut, as an actor, that’s always so freeing to feel like you can play and you don’t have to be word perfect. You can just make it natural for you. So I’m really grateful to Mike for giving us that kind of freedom.

I read that you were really intimidated heading into this. It’s prestige television. It’s a massive project. It’s for HBO. How did you get over that intimidation?

I think just once I met everyone, I felt a lot more relaxed. And once I realized that they’re all just people like me. We’re all feeling the same way about this. We’re all feeling a bit insecure, because the first season was so amazing. And we all desperately want our season to be just as good if not better. We all wanted to live up to the hype for the audience. But to realize that I wasn’t alone in these thoughts, I just felt just kind of more at ease and part of everything that was going on. And then of course reading the scripts, developing the character, rehearsing with Michael and Murray. Just treating it like any other job and just doing my process helped me settle into it. Then it’s just trust. Trusting Mike and trusting that he won’t let it be bad. If it’s not good, he’ll massage the scene or cut it together to be good.

Was there a particular member of the cast or crew that you were most excited to work with?

Most excited? Hmm. This is like a real Sophie’s Choice. Everyone is so great. I was excited about everyone. I had met Haley Lu a couple of times in passing. So I was excited that I’d already met this person a couple of times, even if it was brief. And that we’d be working together so much. I liked that I kind of knew at least one person going into it.

Did knowing Haley Lu help you develop that relationship on screen with her too do you think?

Yeah, or the lack of relationship [laughs]. I think she probably felt the same way going in. So we were fast friends. And then it was just so easy to talk about our scenes.

Yeah, that relationship was so difficult to watch as a viewer because it’s so cringe. And as a woman, too, I have been out with men who I’ve really wanted to like, but there’s just nothing there. And it’s so uncomfortable. And you guys nailed that so well.

We both love cringe comedy, as well. We watched a lot to kind of subconsciously inform those moments. We watched a lot of reality dating shows as well, because those can often be cringe too. We watched some Kyle Mooney YouTube clips, Nathan Fielder moments. It was really fun figuring out the different levels of cringe that we could bring into our scenes.

Turns out it was a lot of levels. A lot of levels could have been brought. Do you feel uncomfortable as you’re shooting those cringe scenes, or is it just acting to you?

Oh, yeah, no, it feels like shit. There’s a scene where I go up to Haley and Leo in the beach club in episode four. The two of them are literally above me at that moment, they’re positioned higher than me. So it’s so vulnerable to go up there and meet Leo and just get rejected by Haley. It created such a visceral feeling in me.

It created one in me too, man. That was awful to watch.

And then just having to, you know, do it over and over again. But, I mean, that scene also was one of my favorite scenes to film because we were laughing and cracking the other actors up. There’s a couple takes where I went up and I introduced myself as Albert. And it didn’t end up making it in. But Haley found that very funny that he’s overcompensating by changing his name from Albie to his full name. I just think those scenes are so relatable especially if you’re a single person. It unfortunately felt pretty real.

A conversation that my friends and I have a lot goes along the lines of, “I think I should like this person. We have so much in common. I should like them.” But ultimately, there’s just nothing there. And you’re trying to convince yourself that maybe you could like them.

Yeah absolutely. You still need that X factor, that universal component to it. You can’t just have everything on paper. Another thing I love about the show is the conversations that it leads to, with friends and family members, as you’re watching it. I met someone who said that they’ll pause it at certain moments, like in the first episode when Theo changes in front of Aubrey. They had paused it and had a discussion and asked each other what they would do in that situation. I think the show is a great conversation piece. And it’s got all these great water cooler moments, especially as you know, at the end of Episode Five. I think that will get talked about a lot.

I don’t even know if I can put words together to formulate a question about Episode Five. Like it was just jaw dropping.

My jaw dropped. My jaw hit the floor. And I knew what was going to happen.

Yeah. Crazy. But also I kind of suspected that. Not exactly that big reveal, but I always felt as though their relationship was off. He made a comment to Portia at one point being like, “Yeah, this is great if you don’t mind a bunch of gay men, grabbing your ass,” or something along those lines. And he also didn’t seem half as posh as his “uncle.”

I saw a tweet that was describing him as a contestant on Love Island. I thought that was really funny.

I’ve also noticed that you’re a musician. You’ve got two songs released. Are you planning to put out any more music?

I wouldn’t call myself a musician, but I guess I did put two little baby songs out. I would love to make an EP or something. It’s just a fun hobby. It’s hard to find the time right now. But I’m going to try my best because I really do enjoy it. And I love music. My goal is just to make stuff but I would listen to. But it’s a newer thing for me, I’m still figuring it out and trying to figure out my process. The production of the second song was a lot different than the first. I’m just trying to figure out my way to streamline the process because each song took me like a year to finish because I just don’t know what I’m doing.

Being an actor and being a musician are similar but different. What do you think the differences are between these two creative endeavours for you?

Music is a lot more solitary for me. I feel like I’m in control of the finished product more because I’m essentially like the director of it. I’m choosing the album art and writing the lyrics and the melody and I’m involved with the instrumentation as well. When you’re creating a character it’s more collaborative because you’re working with a director and the costumer and the hair and makeup person. They’re both extremely vulnerable though. The first time I ever sang in front of someone I felt like I was naked. Especially singing about something that you’ve experienced.

As you’re looking forwards in your career, what kind of roles are you excited to take on next?

I don’t know what the future holds. I’m excited to try different things. There’s so much I want to do as an actor that I haven’t done yet. I’m excited to play a variety of characters in a variety of genres. I want to try them all and see what sticks.