Flashing cameras catch her rock-candy blue eyes, cherry bomb lips and megawatt smile. Swathed in sheer pearlescence, sleek dark hair skimming her porcelain shoulders, she shifts her 5’8″ goddess body for another strobe of pH๏τographs. On the crowded red carpet at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, Alexandra Anna Daddario, 36, is Venus in a constellation of stars.
Less than 72 hours later, she’s simply “Alex,” in no makeup, hair undone, feet up on the counter in her Brooklyn kitchen, wearing what she dubs her “comfy, stretched-out travel jeans.” The NYC native has called L.A. home since 2009, but often returns east. “I’m definitely still a New Yorker, but I sometimes come back and I’m like, ‘Wow, how did I live here so long? Everyone’s so brash.’ And I was too,” she laughs. “I used to put my headphones on and walk through the city at 100 miles per hour, dodging tourists and getting mad at people who didn’t order their coffee quickly enough, but I’ve certainly softened and become more California. Even yesterday, I was walking around New York doing errands, and was like, ‘Hi, how are you?’ to people, and everyone’s looking at me like I’m being far too polite. New York’s fast, it’s like do your business and get out, but I do think I still have that part of me. I have no time for small talk.”
Lucky for us, she’s carved out time for Big Talk after the surreal high of the 74th Primetime Emmys, where she was up for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series in season 1 of Mike White’s Hawaii meets Hitchcock social satire, The White Lotus. A pupu platter of Emmy gold, Lotus won 10 awards, including Outstanding Limited Series. While she didn’t take home a statue for her nuanced performance as troubled-in-paradise newlywed Rachel Patton, Alex is all love for her fellow castmates and the Big Kahuna who made it all possible.
“Mike White, he’s just incredible, and Jennifer [Coolidge] and Murray [Bartlett], and all the other people nominated from the show, it’s just such a talented group, and the cool thing about it is that Mike gave us all an opportunity to shine in something really brilliant that came out of his mind,” she says. “I think we all feel really lucky. We had this intimate and crazy experience shooting it, and to end up on the stage winning an Emmy for the show and just being part of that—I mean, the only reason I was up there was because Mike cast me, and gave me the opportunity to show people what I could do—I’m really grateful and proud. I have just been feeling a lot of graтιтude the last couple of days.”
Animal Instinct
The cast’s spirit of aloha is a 180 from their twisted dynamic on Lotus, a jungle of Sєx, money and primal power plays that unfold at the fictional White Lotus Resort Maui. In one bitingly clever scene, Alex’s character, Rachel, sitting in her snow-leopard swim cover-up, looks like marked prey to Olivia and Paula, her smug Gen Z predators on pool chaises. Licking their chops, throwing machete-sharp questions at Rachel about her quasi career and the wealthy husband she’s “scored” who can pay off her student loans, they decimate her in minutes. But just when you think Rachel is roadkill, she slowly unʙuттons her cover-up and rises in her ivory ʙικιɴι, a lioness. Strolling away, swinging her haunches, she leaves the girls speechless, save for a deflated “Oh, sнιт.” It’s her Darwinian checkmate.
