It Was Her First-Ever Audition Tape. She Landed a Lead on ‘The White Lotus’

Right here’s an inventory of a few of the issues Marissa Lengthy isn’t allowed to speak about.

The identify of her character on The White Lotus. The rest about another characters on The White Lotus. Any plot particulars concerning the present, which she’s been capturing within the south of France for a lot of the spring. Whether or not she shared any scenes with Helena Bonham Carter earlier than the British actress abruptly exited the collection simply weeks into manufacturing. Whether or not Laura Dern, who changed Carter, is taking part in Lengthy’s mom (the 2 have been noticed carrying what seemed to be color-coordinated outfits whereas filming in Cannes final month, spurring infinite on-line hypothesis).

And, after all, who will find yourself lifeless on the finish of the upcoming season of Mike White’s all-star bacchanal — as a result of, after all, any individual all the time does.

“I don’t think I can say,” Lengthy affords with a well mannered smile every time a forbidden query is lobbed at her over a Zoom name from Saint Tropez. “Let’s steer away from that.”

Nonetheless, there may be one element concerning the present — which White has teased will likely be “a bit about fame” — that Lengthy does let slip. She acknowledges that the character she portrays is a younger actress selling a movie on the Cannes Movie Competition. Which, when you consider it, is totally becoming — in a deeply Mike White type of approach — contemplating that Lengthy has by no means been an actress earlier than. Till very not too long ago, she was a 25-year-old mannequin from Tulsa whose closest brush with the enterprise had been serving to her actor-boyfriend document audition tapes in a bed room within the Valley.

However then, sooner or later final November, she determined to tape one in all her personal — and ended up with a number one position on essentially the most prestigious HBO collection since Bran Stark ascended to the Iron Throne, or at the least since Tom Wambsgans took over Waystar Royco.

“It was just the craziest thing that could ever happen, the very definition of surreal,” she says of her astounding newbie’s luck. “My boyfriend was truly only happy for me, but he was in shock. It was just like, ‘Whoa.’”

Even earlier than she landed the White Lotus gig — solid alongside such seasoned performers as Steve Coogan, Vincent Cassel, Sandra Bernhard, Rosie Perez, Chris Messina and Heather Graham, amongst a half-dozen others — Lengthy was clearly on cordial phrases with the universe. Though she grew up about as removed from the Côte d’Azur as is geographically doable — Oklahoma, the place her dad manages properties for an industrial fuel firm and her mother works in holistic well being — she acquired seen early in life. By 15, she had signed with a neighborhood modeling company and was quickly flying across the nation doing style shoots for Storage Clothes, Hollister and Kylie Cosmetics.

Appearing was not on her to-do listing. Shifting to L.A. positively was. She packed her luggage two days after her 18th birthday, settling at first in Koreatown (“It was the cheapest apartment that I could find”) whereas persevering with to mannequin. Then, about 5 years in the past, at a celebration in Malibu, she met her boyfriend — Tanner Zagarino, who has a rising resume of his personal, taking part in the homosexual fraternity brother on season three of The Summer time I Turned Fairly and the impossibly good-looking teen who makes Jason Segel choke on a grape on season two of Shrinking.

That’s when Lengthy discovered about self-tapes.

“We did hundreds of them,” she says of the auditions she helped Zagarino document. “I would just be all these random characters for him behind our iPhones. We had so much fun with it. And he would encourage me. He was like, ‘You should try an acting class.’”

So, she did, then signed along with her boyfriend’s supervisor, Brandon Bisig at Cover Media Companions — who additionally occurs to rep Adam DiMarco, Michael Imperioli’s son in White Lotus’ second season — and inside a number of months was recording her personal very first audition tape, this time with Tanner feeding her strains from the opposite facet of the telephone.

Turned out it was a doozy.

“We’d been looking for a while — we must have seen at least 100 actors, no exaggeration,” says White Lotus government producer Dave Bernad. “But then we saw Marissa’s audition, and the reaction was immediate. It felt like we finally found her. Even on the tape, she had such authenticity. She just lights up the screen.”

Lengthy’s response to touchdown the half was fairly fast, as effectively. “I was in my bedroom closet getting ready to go to breakfast with Tanner and my manager called,” she remembers. “I’d never had a more physical response to any moment in my life. I was weeping and jumping for joy all in one go. It was really unique.”

She’s been capturing in France since April — the entire season takes about six months to finish — studying the job on the job. “She’s not experienced enough to know some of the different on-set vernaculars, so you have to be a little patient,” says Bernad. “But she’s very natural and very comfortable on camera, which is something you can’t teach. It’s just an inherent quality some actors have, and she has it. I was on the set last week watching a scene and I was shocked. I was thinking to myself, ‘I can’t believe this is the first time she’s doing this.’”

Neither can Lengthy. “I’m having the time of my life,” she says. “The cast and all of us, we’ve gotten really close really fast because we’re all together in this beautiful place. Every day we wake up, we go outside, we’re like, ‘Oh my God, this is the coolest thing of all time.’”