Maybe one day I’ll be a tour guide at the Vatican,” ponders Simona Tabasco, relaying an eclectic list of interests with a megawatt smile and absolute earnestness over our Zoom call. “Or work on a farm, because I love animals. Or perhaps I might go into styling, because fashion is a big passion of mine. I’d also like to be a DJ, because I love electronic music and maybe, also, um, a rock star?” Unfortunately, the world’s smallest country and the agriculture sector will have to wait, because the Italian actor is currently enjoying the most high-profile moment of her career as the breakout star of Mike White’s second season of The White Lotus.
For those who have yet to watch the award-winning black-comedy drama, The White Lotus follows the sordid and salacious private lives of several disgustingly rich Americans who are vacay-ing at the titular five-star resort in Taormina, Sicily. Joining an outstanding ensemble cast led by Jennifer Coolidge and F Murray Abraham, Tabasco plays Lucia Greco, a local sex worker who is hired by one of the arrivals (The Sopranos’ Michael Imperioli) to spend the week at his beck and call. When things don’t go to plan, she ends up working her way around the rooms of the salubrious hotspot with her best friend, Mia (played by Beatrice Grannò), in tow.
In another actor’s hands, Greco is a character that could seem marginalised, but Tabasco’s Lucia delivers a standout reinvention of an oft-portrayed profession with wit, wisdom and vulnerability – she is someone who owns her strengths, but is still searching for her truth, who’s not asking to be rescued, but can rescue herself. Such is Tabasco’s mesmerising performance that by the time the credits roll on the seventh and final episode, she easily emerges as the series victor.
“I wanted to make sure that Lucia was full of emotions, and someone who was very aware and projecting her humanity, because she is hungry for life – but she’s also a little confused,” says Tabasco. “As we see in the end, she does get to her declared goal of what she wanted to do, but I think she also left behind a part of herself… The part that is to do with her most sincere and buried desires. She didn’t just want to earn money, she also wanted to earn love and warmth and closeness. In the end, she had to choose – and she chose the more harsh part of herself.”
At 28, Tabasco is already a well-established actor in Italy, but The White Lotus brings another level of exposure. Series two averaged 10.1m viewers per episode across platforms, according to Warner Bros Discovery, which is a 50% increase on the first series.
“I kind of expected it,” she says, smiling, “because of all the awards that the first series won and the traction it had – and it’s a Mike White project, so that already tells you what’s coming.”
Tabasco’s journey to The White Lotus started on 20 January last year, though it almost didn’t happen: she contracted Covid just before her call-back and couldn’t attend in person. “That was it. I thought I’d lost it.” But White threw her a career lifeline. “Mike invited me to a FaceTime audition, which happened, and soon after that we started shooting,” she says, gasping suddenly as she realises that the audition took place a year to the day of our interview. “Oh my God, yes, it’s today. I have the messages, oh happy birthday!” Like her co-stars, Tabasco is superlative in her praise of White (search Jennifer Coolidge’s Golden Globes acceptance speech on YouTube to understand the passion of the appreciation club).
“He’s the father of The White Lotus,” Tabasco coos. “When I got to Taormina, at the beginning of the shoot, I was a little threatened. I didn’t know what was going to happen. But I was very moved and calmed down by what Mike told me, which was that we were all there to make something beautiful.”
For what seems like a life-changing role, it has, she says, changed both everything and nothing. Tabasco will later shrug off any suggestion that her everyday looks very different now, post-White Lotus, but that’s not entirely right, and nor does it give any indication of the levels of adoration she is experiencing. Following several attempts to arrange our interview in person, the reason she is beaming at me over Zoom (with her translator Chiara on call to help clarify her answers) is because it’s mid-fashion week and Tabasco has been officially adopted.
A few days before we chat, she is guest of honour at the JW Anderson and Ami shows in Milan and Paris. A couple of days after we speak, she is front-row at Giambattista Valli’s haute couture finalé, which plays out to The White Lotus theme tune (peak TWL mania), and delivers an exclusive behind-the-scenes diary for British Vogue. And on the day I file this piece, she and Grannò (her real-life best friend) are unveiled as the campaign stars of Kim Kardashian’s underwear line, Skims.
A scoop for Kardashian (“I saw The White Lotus and had to have my girls!” she shared on Instagram), the campaign conjures the same chemistry the pair shared on screen as Lucia and Mia that has inspired a legion of fans to contact Tabasco with letters of thanks for her character “giving them the confidence to start some [positive] processes” of their own.
“I knew Kim Kardashian was a fan of The White Lotus and wanted to get Beatrice and I involved,” Tabasco updates me excitedly over email. “It’s a brand that highlights the
natural beauty of women’s bodies. For me, beauty is also to love, which means we must accept and appreciate ourselves for who we are. Our bodies are not an accessory, but the tool we use to live, and in which we will always be – so why not love it?”
If she wasn’t already prepared for international recognition, then she should start getting used to it. But then, Tabasco has had time to prepare for her moment in the spotlight. In an excellent case of life mirroring art, the 28-year-old was 16 when she was first discovered at an Italian beach resort by directors from the Giffoni Film Festival who asked her to audition for them while she was holidaying with her family – although it seems not to have occurred to her how prophetic that was.
Was it anything like The White Lotus, I ask? “Oh no, no, not at all,” she shakes her head. “It was very familiar.”
Familiar being a byword for unflashy, Tabasco’s childhood was the same, she says. Born in Naples in 1994, Tabasco and her twin brother, Marco, were raised by their graphic-designer father and mother, who worked in insurance.
“Naples is city that by all means and in all ways forges you throughout your childhood and then when you grow up,” she says of its famously firey nature, proudly holding up the chilli tattoo she had inked on her right wrist in honour of her family’s surname.
It was after her holiday encounter that she “fell in love with the sensation of being in front of the camera” and soon after returning home to Naples her parents found her an agent. When she was 18, she won a place at the prestigious Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia film school in Rome and after that she started popping up in beloved Italian series, such as Fuoriclasse, I Bastardi di Pizzofalcone and È Arrivata La Felicità, the latter providing her with her big break in Italy.
As her star is on the international ascent, I ask her if she has considered how she plans to approach fame and, by the same virtue, her privacy.
“It’s an interesting question because I’m a very reserved person as a private individual. I value my privacy, so there is big contrast in me between what I become when I’m in front of the camera, which is a different kind of strength that goes through me when I am working,” she says. “While when I’m off set, I remain this sincere and honest person I have always been despite 10 years of working this job. As an actor, [being open to the world is] such a characteristic of this job that I believe I need to be myself 100% whenever I’m not being something else, so that when I do I’m able to give my 1,000% and everything I am capable of.”
Currently living in a trendy neighbourhood of Rome where she stayed after drama school, she finds it interesting how people can’t dissociate her from her characters – lately, that being Lucia. “We’re similar of course, but are talking about reality and fiction,” she laughs.
I wonder if she relates at all with Lucia Greco.
“The main traits that we have in common is this hunger and interest for life and wish to gain as much experience as we can. But there’s also that side of Lucia that is tenderness and sweetness, that she only shows when she gets close to other characters in the story, and I also feel close to her in that regard,” she concedes, “And we both love to party.”
Given her passion for pushing her craft to its limits, ferocious strength when the cameras are rolling and down-to-earth charisma off screen, Tabasco’s real-life
heroine of the silver screen makes total sense.
“Ah,” she exhales and leans back from her screen when I ask her who she looks up to the most, taking a big breath and raising her hands in the air to form a love heart: “Helena Bonham Carter,” she coos. “Oh. My. God. I love her!”
I can see the synergy between the two of them, I say.
“I think it’s because I love this feeling of craziness of the human condition that’s always out there and she brings to her performance,” she says. “Of course, it depends on the character but in general there’s [something of a] bad taste that she portrays so well. I would call it a recognisable folly that I see in her all the time and I adore!” By all accounts, Tabasco will have plenty of opportunities to test her own mettle. While specific projects remain under wraps (“My plans have been changing. It’s a very interesting moment in my life”), Tabasco is working on perfecting her English. She recalls her White Lotus co-star F Murray Abraham’s words of wisdom on set. “He said to me that I should try anything and everything in this line of work and I thought it was just so beautiful to think that you’re never done.”
“And any ideas of what you would love to do?” I ask.
“I would really like to play a heroine of some kind in an action movie and I really want to dub a cartoon,” she smiles, as she starts to list those ambitions again. “But maybe not a princess.”
The world, it would seem, is Tabasco’s oyster.
The White Lotus season two is available to view now
Styling by Federica Carnevali; hair by Tiziano De Lucia using Olaplex and Balmain Hair Couture; makeup by Riccardo Morandin at W-M Management using Nars; photographer’s assistants Leonardo Galeotti and Arran Davis; shot at ABC Studio, Milan
