When True Detective actress Alexandra Daddario read online that President Obama asked HBO C.E.O. Richard Plepler for advance copies of the hit show and Game of Thrones to watch over Presidents’ Day weekend, her first reaction was, “Wow, the President knows who I am!” Her second thought was, “…. The president has seen my boobs.” Naturally, she posted the latter to Twitter, where it received 4,769 retweets and 4,358 favorites. “I was trying to be funny; I mostly post pictures of my dog on Twitter,” she says. “I’m really a dork, but most people have been pretty great about the boob thing.”
Dork is hardly the word most viewers would use to describe Daddario’s Lisa Tragnetti, a bold Sєxpot with a Rachel-from-Friends haircut, who woos Woody Harrelson’s Martin Hart. In one scene Daddario straddles and handcuffs Harrelson while taking off her clothes. “She’s totally confused and messed up, so I understood the nudity required for the character,” explains Daddario. “I tried not to think about how risqué it got because I got into it, but after I did it, I was like, ‘whoa, what did I just do?’”
That Harrelson is 52 and Daddario is 27 could have caused more pressure for the ingénue, but it only fueled her. “It helped the way I played her, she doesn’t have her head on straight,” she says.
The New York native, who has been acting professionally since she was 16 on All My Children (along with Amanda Seyfried and Michael B. Jordan), had a four-episode arc on the acclaimed series, and, like regular viewers, doesn’t know who the Yellow King is yet. “At one point, someone gave me a binder of all the scripts, but I purposely didn’t read the last four episodes,” she says. “I wanted to know who Lisa was and her world and her relationship. The rest I wanted to know when the audience knew.”
That seemingly laid-back atтιтude applies to Daddario’s fashion choices, as well. For day, she says she is a “creature of comfort” and prefers oversize t-shirts and jeans. “When I have no appointments, I spend the day in pajamas and go to the dog park in pajamas. I’m very casual.” However, she certainly knows how to up the ante when it comes to the red carpet. “I think because it’s so different from my norm it’s all the more fun to get dressed up and be a princess for a night,” she says. She regularly calls upon looks from Donna Karan, Diane von Furstenberg, and A.L.C., with the help of stylist Jenny Ricker, who is known for curating suits for Jon Hamm, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Zac Efron. “Finding a stylist is a little like finding a date, you have to find who is right for you.”
Fittingly, Daddario doesn’t turn to the regular stock of actresses for wardrobe inspiration. “I follow [Lucky editor-in-chief] Eva Chen on Instagram and she is the coolest,” she says. “I don’t own anything like what she wears, but I love the idea of being that fashionable.” Still, when pressed, she couldn’t help, but relay one actress girl crush: “Charlize Theron is perfect. She holds herself with so much poise and grace. I don’t know if she looks so good because she has the best body or because she has the confidence to feel comfortable in what she’s wearing.”
Next up, for the young star is a guest spot on New Girl and filming disaster film San Andreas with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in Australia. She jokes, “It’ll be hard work, but who else would you want to be saved by?!”
