Everyone is talking about The White Lotus season two.
It's the greatest thing on TV right now, so it makes sense. But what about the making of the show? What about the behind-the-scenes secrets? What was it like to film in a fancy hotel for five months, and did anyone go rogue and try to convince their co-stars they were being haunted?
That oddly specific question will make sense soon.
Here are all The White Lotus behind-the-scenes details you're going to want to know about.
Theo James' prosthetic penis.
We all saw it. We all marvelled at it. We all... pondered it.
But the penis attached to Theo James in the show's opening episode was, in fact, a prosthetic.
James discussed the scene in which his character Cameron changed in front of Aubrey Plaza's Harper, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination, during an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
"You go into these scenes, and you have a conversation with the director, and the producers, and they go, 'Okay, for this, we're gonna use a prosthetic.' And you say, 'Okay, that sounds good,'" he shared.
He recalled discussing this with Rebecca Hickey, the show's makeup department head.
"I just want it not to be distracting. It needs to be 'Regular Joe.' Because the scene, you know, it's not about the pee pee, it's about power play and sex. It's about whether he did it deliberately or whether it was an accident and what that means. She says, 'I got you. Yeah, I got you. Regular Joe.'"
Then they got to set and Hickey had a prosthetic that James joked was like "a hammer".
"I mean, it's bigger than that. It's like she stole it off a donkey in the field," he joked. "The thing is ginormous."
Aubrey Plaza's pranks.
The entire cast and crew of season two spent five months holed up at the Four Seasons San Domenico Palace in Sicily to film The White Lotus.
It sounds idyllic, to be honest. But not for Aubrey Plaza.
In a profile for GQ, Plaza recalled how she was driven to pranking her co-stars thanks to the boredom of being stuck inside the Sicilian hotel.
A month into the stay, she arranged the reed diffusers from the hallways in a large Blair Witch-style symbol in the middle of co-star Adam DiMarco's dressing room.
To avoid suspicion, she did the same in her own dressing room a few days later and pretended to freak out to fellow cast members Haley Lu Richardson and Meghann Fahy.
She began to slip papers with ominous messages on them under people's doors too.
"I was definitely questioning my reality for a while there," DiMarco said. "I didn't know who to trust. It was like Murder on the Orient Express. Everyone was the murderer."
Plaza said she knew it played on DiMarco's mind.
"Adam was so innocent, like a baby bird. It was really sick, what I was doing to him. I got him to the brink of a psychological break."
But the staff, with access to security footage, always knew it was her. As she said: "They thought I was sketchy. Which I am."
Filming in the hotel became a little... meta.
For the first few months of filming, during February and March, the hotel was practically empty as it was the off-season, but by April the hotel was preparing to host real-life guests again.
This made for an interesting experience for the cast and crew.
"We were staying there while we were watching [the employees] get ready for everybody else to come. They were shampooing the carpets, and they were painting the walls, and there were huge flowers being brought in from every direction. And then you started seeing it fill in with real people," Meghann Fahy told Elle.
Watch the trailer for The White Lotus season two. Post continues below.
"And that was kind of a strange experience, because you're starting to mingle and sit at the bar, or sit at breakfast, next to people that you're, in a way, embodying for the sake of the show. So it was pretty interesting."
Portia's wardrobe purposely looks like... that.
While the rest of The White Lotus guests are wearing Gucci to breakfast (when in Italy!), Portia's wardrobe is more chaotic than glam.
In an interview with Variety, costume designer Alex Bovaird said the character's much debated style has one purpose.
"I do try and keep in mind the demographic of the character, so she doesn't have expensive clothes. Even her Versace-esque platform heels are definitely not Versace.
"She's young, she doesn't really know who she is, and she's trying on different ideas. Sometimes she dresses more dainty, and sometimes she dresses like a boy. She did bring a couple of nice dresses because she knew she was going to dinner, but the price point is $100-$200, or cheaper. Lots of vintage and thrift store finds."
She also wears a number of brands, including the UK's House of Sunny, which are big on social media - a nod to the fact that when Portia says how much she hates her phone and social media, she's lying.
Haley Lu Richardson contributed to Portia's wardrobe.
Portia LOVES crochet, which is handy because so does actor Haley Lu Richardson.
Richardson was actually able to contribute to Portia's crochet-heavy rotation: the bucket hat Portia wears in episode four was one she made herself.
"Yeah, I crocheted a bucket hat," she told Vulture.
"I love crocheting. I’ve been doing it since I was 8. And I like trying to get my characters to wear something I’ve made when it makes sense."
Considering the rest of Portia's outfits... it does make sense. I'll give her that.
A lot of the show was improvised, so the actors seeped into their characters.
Creator Mike White encouraged all the actors to add their own energy into their characters.
"A lot of the time Mike would come up after a scene and be like, 'Wow, great acting. I felt like I was watching a documentary,'" Richardson told Vulture.
"And we’re like, 'Is that good? Do you want to be watching a documentary?'" DiMarco joked.
"Mike hears and sees everything... he’s so observant that you leave feeling kind of vulnerable. He picked up on things that I haven’t even picked up on about myself yet," Richardson said.
"If you're fiddling with your jacket or something, three weeks later he's like, 'Oh, do that thing you were doing with your jacket.' Like, What are you talking about?" DiMarco agreed.
There were some alleged... threesomes.
As for some cast-centric gossip, there's been reports swirling around that The White Lotus team had *plenty* more fun than just some innocent pranks while filming in Italy.
Someone claiming to be the bestie of a makeup artist for the show sent in a tip off to famed Instagram gossip site, Deuxmoi. They shared some interesting stories about both cast and crew.
"There were some threesomes between a couple who were there and a girl from production," the source shared.
"[And] an actor was bothered by sex noises and moved out to an Airbnb in March."
They also noted that Sabrina Impacciatore (who plays Valentina) is "the most loving and cheerful person".
And although Theo James' character has quite the wandering eye, the source told Deuxmoi that James himself is "one of the few actors she hasn't seen cheat on his wife".
As for the rest of the cast... well...
Reportedly there were lots and lots of cast hookups.
Another source also told Deuxmoi that there was a bit of a romance between cast mates Meghann Fahy (who plays Daphne) and Leo Woodall (who plays British bad boy Jack).
The pair reportedly hit it off during filming and had a fling.
"Meghann even went on vacation with Leo after filming ended," the source said.
"Meghann and Leo 1000 per cent. Tonnes of witnesses. Not a whole lot of secrecy behind this pairing. They got together in real life and were super cute on set. Not sure if they're still together or if it was just a fling."
And to really make things interesting, it appears Adam DiMarco also had his own fair share of hookups.
The source alleged that DiMarco and his co-star Simona Tabasco (who plays Lucia) "slept together", as did he and Richardson (who plays Portia), with Deuxmoi saying, "Haley and Adam are always together."
Initially, there were reports that both Fahy and Richardson had been unfaithful to their partners, but it has since been confirmed that they were single during filming.
Richardson recently announced the end of her two-year engagement with her long-term boyfriend, although the pair had split some time prior to the announcement. As for Fahy - she and her long-time partner, fellow actor Billy Magnussen, also ended their relationship.
Although The White Lotus is coming to an end soon, we're sure there's still plenty of Sicily antics to be unearthed.
Stay tuned!
This article was originally published on December 5, 2022 and was updated on December 10, 2022.
Feature Image: Instagram @sabrinaimpacciatore/@adamdimarco.
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