This week, actor Aimee Lou Wood graces The Run-Through to catch us up on all things The White Lotus. Ahead of Sunday’s season finale, fashion and culture writer Hannah Jackson joins Chloe to seek out answers to our most pressing fan questions. Among them: Why does Wood’s character, Chelsea, stay with the evasive Rick (Walton Goggins)? What was it like to shoot in Thailand for so long? And who is she closest to from the cast?
Read edited excerpts from the conversation below—then go ahead and hit play on the full episode, in which Wood also discusses Chelsea’s instantly iconic coconut bra and the rumor that she might be playing Pattie Boyd in Sam Mendes’s quartet of Beatles biopics. Could be something…
Chloe Malle: Aimee, we are so excited to have you here because I have to say, we’ve reached peak White Lotus fever, which sounds like a venereal disease, but seems appropriate. I feel like it’s so rare that there’s a group [viewing] experience where everyone’s watching in real time, because everything’s streaming now.
Aimee Lou Wood: Do you know what? It’s so lovely. I way prefer it. I prefer this format. Because, actually, I’d seen up to [episode] six, but I haven’t seen seven or eight, so I’m now watching it with everyone. Oh my God. It feels really special and a lot less anxiety-inducing than the binge. Every TV show I’ve done has been dropped at once, and everyone’s at different points of the story. I’m an Aquarius, so I love being part of the collective.
Malle: It’s a fun office experience. We polled our colleagues for their theories of who gets killed, and most people I’ve talked to think that Chelsea is getting killed.
Wood: Theories have abounded. I am so desperate for it to just be out. I got sent the scripts, so I have known the whole story since I was 29 years old. I’m now 31. I have been carrying the weight of these secrets for so long. I actually cannot wait until Sunday for this exact reason.
Hannah Jackson: Your character has such great facial expressions on the show. Do you have a poker face yourself?
Wood: I must, on some level. I saw these women in an elevator yesterday who do Botox. We were talking about how it’s obvious I haven’t had it because of how expressive my head is and my eyebrows.
Malle: I think that’s a real concern for actors. The two of us interviewed Chloe Fineman from SNL, and she does a very famous Melania Trump impersonation, and she got Botox just on her chin because she wanted to make sure her forehead was still movable, but they did it slightly uneven, so she couldn’t do the Melania.
Wood: I’m very anti-Botox for myself, because a lot of my career relies on these facial expressions. It needs to move, but sometimes it moves too much. Sometimes I watch things back and I go, Jesus. I wasn’t aware that I was using my face that much in that moment. A lot of people do that very still acting, and everything’s kind of mumbled, they look really hot and cool. I don’t think I’ll ever play a part that has a poker face, ’cause I can’t do it.
Malle: Do you play poker?
Wood: I don’t play poker, but I wish I did. It seems so cool. Leslie Bibb’s best friend, who is one of the coolest women I’ve ever met, she used to have an all-women poker game that she did in New York City. I feel like there should be a TV show about it.
Malle: I wanna hear about being on set. Did it feel like everyone was sort of on vacation together? Were you all hanging out afterward?
Wood: I think everyone thought it was gonna feel a bit more like a vacation, and then it turns out we were working a lot, and we’re living on the set, which is very unusual. It was The Truman Show. It felt less vacation and more like family. It felt like a kind of dysfunctional, glorious family. We needed each other.
Malle: Did people bring their families, their friends, their partners?
Wood: Yes, and that was massively helpful. So when Pete, Michelle [Monaghan]’s husband, came with their kids and they stayed for a long time, that was really lovely because they brought the outside world right in with them. Also, Sam [Rockwell]—it was very lovely when he got there. ’Cause Leslie [Bibb] and I, we’re really, really, really close. I mean, we still speak every day. We were just hanging out the whole time. She’s a Scorpio sun, I’m a Scorpio moon. We’re very much bonded. But then it was so lovely, ’cause when Sam got there, she became even more Leslie. It was like I got an extra layer when Sam got there, ’cause they’re just the best couple.
Jackson: Can you talk a little bit about the challenges of being in that environment, and how you leaned on each other?
Wood: There’s so many amazing parts of living in a beautiful hotel, but it becomes your whole world. Most of the places that we were in, it was only cast and crew. The only people that you’re seeing are each other. You can’t cook. You get a lot of your self-esteem from doing things that are mundane, so doing your own laundry, folding it, putting it away, making some food, walking to the grocery shop. That’s how you feel like a human.
When you’re on set, it’s already like everyone knows my every move, but the release of that is, at the end of the day, you’re like, “Goodbye,” and you’re in your own space and you can kind of decompress. That was not happening here. Everyone knew what villa we were in. It feels like you’re being watched the whole time, like a reality TV show. So it did start to feel a bit mad.
Malle: Was anyone a Method actor who made it hard to relax with?
Wood: I think that we all became a little accidentally Method. It wasn’t even on purpose. It was just that there is no escape. There were nights where we would be out for dinner and people would be saying lines verbatim from the show and they didn’t even know they were doing it.
I think I was accidentally Method, ’cause Mia, who was doing my hair, halfway through was like, “Baby, you need to go home, ’cause I dunno if I’m talking to Chelsea or Aimee.” And I was like, “I don’t know who I am.” And there was a lot of personal mirroring going on [with Walton]. We’ve not had the same lives as them, but everyone’s essence is pretty similar to their character—apart from Patrick [Schwarzenegger]. He’s nothing like Saxon.
Malle: I find one of the most endearing qualities of Chelsea is how forgiving she is. I wonder if you think her endless forgiveness for Rick is a power or a weakness.
Wood: So interesting that you asked me that, ’cause I’ve been thinking a lot about this and she taught me so much about where I can trip up in life. And it was very illuminating, [because] there would be moments where naturally I would be like Chelsea. I think that there’s this stubborn belief in fate and that things are predetermined and they’re written. And actually, whilst that can be magical, it also can be quite disempowering because it means that she’s saying that she doesn’t have choice, that she doesn’t have free will. And that’s why she and Rick are really similar.
People are like, “Look how selfless she is.” But actually, she’s a great deflector. She’s always going, “Rick is so mysterious. You’re so secretive.” We don’t know anything about Chelsea. She’s so mysterious. She puts all of her attention on him as a way to not be seen. And actually, I think that a lot of anxious-attached people go for avoidant people so that they don’t have to be seen, and intimacy is into me, see. She’s with someone who she knows is unable, at this point in his life, to fully see her, and that might suit her in a way. What’s weird about Saxon and Chelsea is that Saxon really likes being seen by her, even if it’s brutal.
Malle: One of my favorite scenes so far has been Chelsea turning away Saxon’s advances with a stack of meditation books. I thought that’s one of the best “no, thank you”s that any young woman has ever instituted. What was it like, filming that scene?
Wood: That was my last ever scene. That was the last scene I filmed. The first scene that I filmed was with Patrick, so the first one that we did was, “How do I get a drink around here?” “You go up to the bar and you order one.” And the last one was that. It felt very emotional that we started it together and we ended it together, but that image sums up Chelsea. It’s like, No, don’t look at me. Look at these books instead, look at these quotes instead. Look at star signs instead. Like, she does push people away with the thing that is seemingly intimate.
Malle: Do you miss everyone now? Are there multiple group chats?
Wood: There are lots of group chats. I still speak to Leslie every day. I speak to Michelle loads and loads. I speak to everyone still. We’re still very bonded. It was hard because I went back to England. Most people were either in New York or LA, so there’s been a lot of hanging out that has occurred without me. I have had quite bad FOMO, and Patrick’s really good at being like, “I’m here with everyone, we miss you.” But it felt sad and scary, as much as I wanted to get home. I remember doing that scene and being like, This is the last one. And I’m so desperate to get home and see my friends and be in my flat and be in London, but I’m also terrified of leaving these friends and this family and [going] back into the real world.
It was actually great because Michelle came to do a job in London, and so we went out for dinner, and I hadn’t seen anyone in so long, and I was finding it really hard to get back into my life, and then I saw Michelle and she was like, “Same.” And then I saw Natasha [Rothwell] and she was like, “Same.” And then you just realize that everyone’s going through the same thing. And the more we spoke about it, the better it was.
And then as soon as the first episode dropped, it felt like it’s no longer our thing. And actually, a weight lifted—it was like, oh, it’s the world’s now.
Jackson: Can you tell us a bit about what you have coming up?
Wood: I just wrapped on Daddy Issues series two, which is just a really funny, silly show that I love doing, and the most comforting place to be is on that set. And then I wrote a show that’ll be coming out this year. It’s called Film Club, and it is about a girl called Evie who can’t leave the house, so she has a film club that she hosts every Friday with her best friend who she’s secretly in love with. It’s very rom-com, and I am very much about bringing the classic rom-coms back.
Malle: What’s your top favorite rom-com?
Wood: Broadcast News. I like rom-coms that aren’t quite rom-coms, but they are rom-coms. When Harry Met Sally, obviously—very, very close second. Sleepless in Seattle. Like, Holly Hunter and Meg Ryan are, to me, just the best people that have ever lived, and I miss them. I have a whole thing about—I feel like TV achieves it a bit more, but like, you know the movie that you just rewatch over and over again on the plane? On a Sunday you put your cozy jumper on, you get some popcorn, and you watch Sleepless in Seattle. That would be my life’s mission, to write a movie that is like Sleepless in Seattle.
Jackson: Well, now we have to ask about your culture diet. Have you been reading, watching, binging, listening to anything?
Wood: I am excited to catch up on stuff because I’ve really been out of the loop. When I was in Thailand, I didn’t watch anything, because I was very much kind of like, I’m in this story and I have to be in this story.
Jackson: I heard you’re a Girls fan?
Wood: Only recently!
Jackson: What girl do you think you are?
Wood: I mean, it’s not good to be any of them, is it? I think I’m a Hannah.
Malle: I’m probably a Marne.
Jackson: [Laughs] That’s terrible.
Wood: And sometimes I feel like I can be a bit Shosh, but I think I’m probably Hannah sun, Shosh rising.
Jackson: And your moon? I’m getting a little sprinkle of Jessa from you. Just a sprinkle, though.
Malle: Chelsea is Jessa.
Jackson: The free-spiritedness. But I think you have the groundedness of a Shoshana too.
Wood: Thank you!
Malle: Aimee, thank you so much for joining us. We are at the edge of our seats for this weekend. I know you are too.
