Canadian star Adam DiMarco checks out a new season of The White Lotus | CBC News

A second season of HBO’s social satire The White Lotus premiered on Sunday – and its Canadian star Adam DiMarco says he still wonders if the whole experience was a dream.

“I’d read the script, I’d seen it a couple of times before the premiere, I’d gone to the premiere, and I was still picking up things, subtleties and innuendos,” he said in an interview with qis Tom Power.

“I look forward to watching the rest of the season and being reminded that it was real.”

Set in the fictional beach resort White Lotus – where nervous hotel employees tend to the every need of their ultra-rich, ultra-weepy guests – each season begins with a corpse. They just don’t know whose, why or how.

DiMarco stars in season 2 as Albie di Grasso, a 20-year-old Albie di Grasso who accompanies his sex-addict father Dominic (The sopranos‘ Michael Imperioli) and his lecherous grandfather Bert (Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham) to the resort’s Sicilian location.

The escape is meant to be an exploration of family heritage and an escape after Dominic is caught cheating on Albie’s mother.

CLOCK | The White Lotus Season 2 trailer:

DiMarco says he felt right at home on set with Imperioli – who rose to fame as young mobster Christopher Moltisanti on HBO The sopranos — who “felt like a surrogate father at times,” he said.

“He’s just very down to earth, funny, obviously talented, just a really good guy to work with and be around. I felt very, very lucky to have him as my TV dad,” DiMarco said.

The first season took home 10 Emmy Awards

The White Lotus was created by Mike White, who was also the showrunner behind HBO’s enlightenment. White has been a contestant for multiple seasons of reality TV shows The amazing race and survivor before he did lotus.

“I notice a lot of similarities between survivor and The White Lotus‘ said DiMarco, noting that each series begins with a boat full of strangers arriving on an unfamiliar island.

“Both shows really delve into the social game, the social politics between people from different walks of life.”

as the guests The White Lotus Crossing Paths – an ensemble cast that includes Jennifer Coolidge, Aubrey Plaza, Will Sharpe, Haley Lu Richardson, Tom Hollander, Theo James and Meghann Fahy – they realize that a trip to paradise isn’t all it’s supposed to be.

The first season, which took home Best Limited Series (and nine other awards) at the 2022 Emmy Awards in September, was directed by Connie Britton, Steve Zahn, Jake Lacy, Murray Bartlett, Alexandra Daddario and Sydney Sweeney .

Coolidge, the only original actress to reprise her role in the second season, won Best Actress in a Limited Series.

“I just had a kind of epiphany”

DiMarco, who is from Oakville, Ontario, was stuck in a depressive rut while studying life sciences at McMaster University. In his free time, he turned to movies and TV shows, and a lightbulb went out.

“I just had a kind of epiphany one day. I thought this looked like a fun industry to work in,” DiMarco said. “I thought about being a writer, and then I thought, you know what, let me try acting first and see if I like it.”

The performer dropped out of school, moved to Vancouver on his own and enrolled in acting classes. Eventually he landed an audition for the second season of The White Lotusand watched his first season to prepare.

If the show’s first season dealt with colonialism in Hawaii — building tension between the resort’s wealthy guests, harried waiters, and indigenous Hawaiians in a commentary on class, race, and privilege — season two is all about sex politics in Sicily.

But its larger-than-life characters — like Imperioli’s Hollywood bigwig, Coolidge’s child celebrity, Plaza’s self-righteous attorney, or James’ sleazy tech-bro billionaire — don’t just make for good TV.

“As the tourist season approached, the hotel opened up to other people. So we would essentially just see the real-life versions of some of our characters walking into that hotel,” DiMarco said.

“Just like, oh, I think I’m playing the Dude… It was just fun people watching.”