AUBREY PLAZA

The White Lotus (HBO)

Mike White’s sophomore season of The White Lotus shifts its focus from class to gender dynamics, with Plaza leading the ensemble cast as the shrewd, cynical Harper opposite her more affable husband, Ethan (Will Sharpe). “Harper and Ethan have some pretty gnarly scenes,” she confesses, noting that the conversations they often have behind the closed doors of their hotel suite were some of the most grueling of her career.

“It’s emotionally and physically draining, to argue with your husband for hours,” Plaza adds. “When you have a really hard discussion with your partner, it’ll last a couple of hours, but when you’re shooting a really hard discussion with your partner, it lasts all day, so you have to be in that state for a really long time. It’s just a bummer.”

When the cameras weren’t rolling, Plaza tried to maintain peace and quiet — exactly what Harper would herself avoid. “I generally go back to my dressing room and play Solfeggio frequencies and try to calm myself down,” explains Plaza, referring to the numerology-based sound tones believed to alleviate anxiety and balance chakras. “I meditate in between takes.”

White wrote the part specifically with Plaza in mind. “I think there’s a lot of Harper’s personality that cross[es over] with my personality,” she says. “It’s a side of me that is more intimate, vulnerable, that I haven’t explored onscreen so much. I’ve been in a long-term relationship, so I understand the feeling of the peaks and valleys of long-term relationships. It’s hard. It’s fucking work. The challenge for me was to track every little moment that’s going on for her.”

Plaza notes that capturing Harper’s sensitivity was the toughest part of her job. “It’s very easy for me to play someone who is sarcastic and has a wall up,” she says. “But that was a fun challenge for me: to kind of get to go crazy with that side of myself, but also have this underlying sadness.”