‘The White Lotus:’ Adam DiMarco Isn’t Sure “Nice Guys” Like Albie Exist

Ironically, Adam DiMarco thinks his seemingly well-intentioned Albie Di Grasso may be doomed to make the same mistakes as his father, Dominic (Michael Imperioli), just because he’s so desperate to break the cycle. “Albie has this obsession of not being like his father, but the more you obsess over something, the more likely you are to fulfill that prophecy,” DiMarco says on this week’s Still Watching podcast. In episode five, we see this theory come to fruition as Albie gets further entangled with Lucia (Simona Tabasco), the same woman his father had seduced just a few nights before. 

“I think what Albie likes about Lucia is that she brings him out of his head and into the moment, and just kind of takes the lead on a lot of things,” DiMarco says about his budding romance with Lucia. “And then Portia’s maybe expecting Albie to take the lead on things to the point where she’s giving him the note of being more aggressive.”

As for Albie and Portia’s will-they-or-won’t-they flirtation, DiMarco suggests that it was always destined to be a “won’t they” for the Gen Z star-crossed lovers, so much so that he and Haley Lu Richardson created a physical representation of their missed connection. “Haley and I had this handshake in Sicily where we would go for a high five and then intentionally miss it every time,” DiMarco shares. “And sometimes I would forget that handshake, and I would go to high-five and then she would miss, and I’d be like, ‘Oh, right.’ And vice versa. Looking back on it, that kind of is our whole characters’ dynamic.”

Elsewhere on The White Lotus this week, Harper (Aubrey Plaza) loses her cool at the winery after finally confronting Ethan (Will Sharpe) about his wild boys’ night with Cameron (Theo James); Mia (Beatrice Grannò) finds her way back to the piano after making a deal with Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore); and Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) stumbles in on an unlikely scene involving Quentin (Tom Hollander) and his “nephew” Jack (Leo Woodall). As always, Still Watching co-hosts Richard Lawson and Chris Murphy unpack what exactly went down and offer new theories about who does not make it out of the vacation alive. Listen below, and find a partial transcript of the DiMarco interview as well. For your own questions, comments, and salacious theories, please email [email protected].

Vanity Fair: What were your conversations like with Mike White in building the character from the beginning?

Adam DiMarco:  I think Mike and I were, were very cognizant of playing up Albie’s sweet side and his sensitive side and his empathetic side. In terms of like being a nice guy, I don’t know if there is such a thing in the world [laughs]. People contain multitudes. Everyone has moments where they are the hero of their story and the villain of their story. Reading online at what everyone’s saying on Twitter and Reddit about Albie now is so interesting because, like you were saying, you can’t figure him out. And I think the same could be said for like a lot of characters in the show, which is just a testament to Mike’s writing. Any one of these characters could turn out to be the villain of the season, and it would be satisfying.

There’s obviously what’s on the page in terms of your character. But for you as an actor is it important that you have a deeper sense of where this character’s coming from, morally?