Alexandra Daddario plays one of the lost souls at the center of the satirical HBO limited series “The White Lotus” — the regretful newlywed Rachel. Having married her husband Shane (Jake Lacy) just recently, she starts to discover some unpleasant facets of his personality while on their Hawaii honeymoon, causing a storm of tension between the two. One may start to wonder how Rachel never saw his true colors in the past, but as Daddario reasons in an exclusive new interview for Gold Derby, “I think she probably saw him maybe being rude to other people, but not to her, which is always a sign, and she probably ignored it for a long time.” Watch the full video chat above.
Rachel spends much of the season not only in conflict with Shane but with herself. She feels uncertain about her future, writing listicles for a living when she longs for something more, while also having Shane and his nosy mother in her ear urging her to simply be happy as his wife. Daddario thought back to earlier in her career when she wasn’t necessarily getting the kind of roles she wanted in order to get into Rachel’s mindset. “There certainly could have been a time when that just all dried up and the choices I made just started to push me into a place where I would begin doing work that I really couldn’t tolerate,” she notes. “I could have met some guy, and what would that have felt like?”
Daddario also resonated with Rachel’s situation of being stuck in an unhealthy relationship with someone who wasn’t receptive to her feelings. “Literally nothing that I felt was allowed,” she recalls, of that previous relationship. “It was overwhelming to the other person, and that’s not how things should be, and Shane’s a little bit like that.” Still, Rachel has to deal with her own internal struggle as she tries to rationalize her own decisions. “She’s not happy with her choices, but she made them for a reason, and I think that’s where her hypocrisy comes in,” the actress explains. “She put herself in that situation, so she’s at war with herself.”
While Rachel spends the vast majority of her honeymoon at war with Shane, even threatening to leave him, she ultimately decides to stay with him in the end. This proved to be a controversial choice for some viewers, which was admittedly shocking to Daddario. “I was actually surprised by the internet reactions to, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe that she stayed,'” she states, adding that she never really expected her to leave. While the nature of “The White Lotus” means we probably won’t check in on Rachel and Shane in future seasons, the actress believes her character will leave her husband eventually. However, she clarifies, “I do think it takes her a little while.”
PREDICT the 2022 Emmy nominees by July 12
Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?
SIGN UP for Gold Derby’s free newsletter with latest predictions
