White Lotus Star Calls Getting Recognized In Strip Club Her Career Highlight

Warning: SPOILERS lie ahead for The White Lotus season 2.

One of the core ensemble members from The White Lotus season 2, Haley Lu Richardson, cites getting recognized by a stripper as the highlight of her budding career. In the most recent installment of the hit HBO anthology series, Richardson portrays Portia, the gen-z assistant with questionable sartorial taste to Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya McQuoid-Hunt. Her work in The White Lotus season 2 has been one of Richardson’s more notable in recent years, namely as it marks a departure from the teen dramas and coming-of-age stories she had come to be known for in such films as Five Feet Apart and The Edge of Seventeen.

While appearing on The Late Late Show With James Corden, Richardson recounts a memorable fan moment that took place with a pole dancer in a strip club following the release of The White Lotus season 2. In explaining the shift in her audience now that she has starred in a show that is far more mature than many of her past projects, the actor describes the delightful surprise of encountering fans in the most unexpected of places. Check out what she had to say below:

“Can I tell you the most proud moment of my career? I love strip clubs, and I go frequently to this place called ‘Jumbo’s Clown Room’… I’m very invested in the pole dancers… There’s this woman who I’m a big fan of. She was dancing. I was cheering the whole time. I was on the edge of my seat literally, and then she’s done… and she passes me, and I’m like ‘you did great, you’re beautiful’ and she looked me right in the eye, and she was like ‘it would be a sin if I didn’t tell you you’re great on the show’… and it’s the proudest moment for me.”

Related: Why THAT White Lotus Season 2 Character Death Worked

Portia’s White Lotus Season 2 Ending Explained

Richardson’s character, Portia, had one of the most unexpectedly climactic and gripping narrative arcs of the most recent installment of The White Lotus. At the start of the season, it appeared her central conflict would be balancing a vacation romance with Adam DiMarco’s Albie with trying to satisfy an Coolidge’s overly demanding boss, Tanya, whose husband Greg does not want her assistant tagging along on their trip. However, following Greg’s abrupt departure and the seemingly serendipitous run-in she and Tanya have with Quentin (Tom Hollander), and his handsome “nephew” Leo (Leo Woodall), everything changes and a series of increasingly harrowing and eventually fatal events are set off.

Once Portia accompanies Tanya to Quentin’s lavish palazzo in Palermo where Leo whisks her away and seems intent on keeping her apart from her boss, she realizes something more sinister than a relaxing weekend away is afoot and becomes the first to suspect that Tanya is in danger. After realizing she has essentially been kidnapped and confronts Leo, Portia is abandoned on the streets of Palermo and decides to heed his advice of keeping her head down and leaving Italy as soon as possible, knowing that there is nothing she can do at that point to prevent Tanya’s fate. Portia’s final scene in The White Lotus season 2 sees her reunite with Albie at the airport where she decides to give him a chance and asks for his number, indicating that though she got the adventure she was looking for while in Italy, she is ready to embrace normalcy and leave the traumatic trip behind.

Everything We Know About The White Lotus Season 3

Though the finale of The White Lotus season 2 only recently aired, creator Mike White has already assured eager fans that he is conceiving a third installment of the series, which was confirmed by the executive vice president of HBO Programming, Francesca Orsi. While the first two seasons featured completely different casts, besides Coolidge’s Tanya and Jon Gries’ Greg, Coolidge is unlikely to return following Tanya’s fatal end, but White has teased the potential return of other fan-favorite characters from season 2. In terms of the illustrious locations the series is known for, White has expressed interest in setting The White Lotus season 3 somewhere in Asia and exploring Eastern religious philosophies as a way of offering a satirical look at themes of death and spirituality.

Next: The White Lotus S2 Finally Explains Why Greg Didn’t Want Portia In Sicily

Source: The Late Late Show With James Corden