-and-Kim-Novak.jpeg?width=1200&height=800&crop=1200:800 "Kim Novak says Sydney Sweeney is ‘totally wrong’ to play her because she ‘looks sexy all the time’ – UK Times")
It’s no secret that The White Lotus is a star-making conveyor belt for young actors. Just look at the stratospheric trajectories of alumni like Lukas Gage, Leo Woodall and Haley Lu Richardson, to name a few. It was exactly what Canadian actor Adam DiMarco needed when he was asked to play the painfully earnest Stanford graduate Albie Di Grasso in season two. “I was definitely questioning where my career was going a bit before White Lotus came around… it changed my life for sure,” the 35-year-old tells me over Zoom. He’s perched awkwardly beneath a towering, wedding-style floral arch. Beside him, a sign screams the title of his next project in blood-red lettering: Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen — the opening salvo of his post-breakout era.
In the eight-part dread-filled horror, out now on Netflix, DiMarco is the golden retriever fiancé to Camila Morrone’s fearless — if somewhat neurotic — Rachel. Days before their wedding, Rachel’s mild pre-ceremony jitters escalate into a deep paranoia upon meeting her deranged in-laws and discovering a sinister curse. True to its title, the show delivers all the hallmarks of a gripping horror: mirror jumpscares aplenty, lots of blood and enough drawn-out suspense to send your nervous system into overdrive.
Promoting the series from a junket room in New York, DiMarco comes across surprisingly shy, his gaze drifting magnetically towards the floor. The actor is steeling himself for two days of press, sporting a trendy Pedro Pascal-style moustache; his brown eyes illuminated by the fluorescent studio lights to match his chocolate-coloured satin suit. If he is nervous, I can’t blame him – it’s his first time leading a big-budget Netflix drama (executive produced by the Duffer Brothers, the twin duo behind Stranger Things, no less).
Did he feel the pressure, knowing the scrutiny that would come with the Duffers and their first foray after Stranger Things? He’s keen to brush off any comparisons. “It’s not trying to be anything close to Stranger Things, which I think is the correct move just to do something wildly different and unpredictable,” he says. “I knew how much the Duffer brothers trusted Hailey Z Boston [the director] with her vision.”
If there were nerves, at least he had plenty of people rooting for him. His White Lotus co-stars have been cheering him on from the sidelines. Beatrice Grannò, who played sex worker Mia in 2022’s Sicily season, came to the Something Bad premiere, and he’s been texting Sabrina Impacciatore – who played the overbearing hotel manager – about the new project, too. They watched the DiMarco make his name as Albie, the fresh-faced 20-something who prides himself on being respectful towards women, but learns, on holiday, that his views clash with those of his womanizing dad (Sopranos star Michael Imperioli) and his misogynistic grandfather (F. Murray Abraham). On-screen differences aside, he’s still in touch with the two actors today. “I’m hoping to see Michael and Murray when I’m done with press here in New York as well,” he tells me.
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While the cast of The White Lotus season two appear to be one big happy family, relationships reportedly soured among the latest crop of stars during the filming of season three at Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui in Thailand. Jason Isaacs, who played the unscrupulous financier Timothy Ratliff, described the filming experience in an interview with Vulture as “a cross between summer camp and Lord of the Flies but in a gilded cage” and claimed that friendships were “made and lost”, while rumours suggested a rift between on-screen love interests Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood. DiMarco admits filming his season in Italy was an intense experience, particularly with the cast living together for months in the very hotel where they were filming. “That show’s crazy because there’s no escape… you go out to dinner [together], you can’t just like sneak off,” DiMarco says. “Sometimes you just wanna like not talk to anyone for a day.”
DiMarco would escape to a hotel suite known as the “sunken room” due to its 1970s-style conversation pit, where he would bolt the door shut for some peace. “At lunch, I would just sleep in there and I would lock the doors and I was like, ‘This is my room now,’” he laughs. “Sometimes shoots can get to be a bit like Survivor or something… It’s like OK, ‘We have our alliance and then this is our like sub alliance or whatever.’”
During filming, DiMarco developed a bond with Coolidge, who found a career resurgence in The White Lotus for her performance as the deeply eccentric Tanya McQuoid (and for delivering the famous line: “These gays, they’re trying to murder me!”). In true Tanya fashion, Coolidge took it upon herself to educate DiMarco on the local wine while they were in Italy. “I was never really a big drinker. I don’t drink,” he says. “But there were these amazing bottles of Sicilian wines that kept making their way onto our tables, and you can only say no to so many.” As if to prove how much Coolidge taught him, DiMarco fires off facts about the “Etna Rosso” from the vineyards on the side of the famous volcano. “It’s like volcanic ash in the soil, which makes their olive oil and their wine just kind of have a little bit of something,” he says effusively. “It was a good time.”
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DiMarco, who is half Italian, was born in Oakville, Canada, in 1990. He had a stereotypical Canadian upbringing: much of his childhood was spent preparing for a professional hockey career until a period of illness in his teens set his training back. By the time he recovered, he had fallen behind his peers. “I missed a pretty important developmental year,” he pauses, deflecting any seriousness to a more humorous anecdote. “That was also the year that everyone started showering together after the games… I came back after a year and I was like, ‘What did I miss? We’re all just showering together now?’” he grins. With the hockey dream derailed, DiMarco followed his four older sisters down the academic route. “I did well in maths and science, so I was like, OK, I’ll do that at university.”
DiMarco spent one semester studying Life Sciences at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, which he hated. In the depths of his boredom, he binged through the campus’ library of films and TV shows and found his calling. “I really expanded what I was watching and then I just had an epiphany… I grew up in a small town and I never thought of the film industry as an industry that I could work in.” At 19, he dropped out and enrolled at Vancouver Film School to study acting. After graduation, he secured roles in local Disney Channel productions, playing Debby Ryan’s love interest in the 2012 teen movie Radio Rebel and shared the screen with a young Zendaya in 2014’s Zapped, whose character finds an app that magically allows her to control boys. By 2015, he had graduated to more young-adult-oriented programmes, including the Syfy series The Magicians and Netflix’s The Order.
In an industry that often rewards early starts, DiMarco was something of a late bloomer. While he was chasing an NHL dream on the ice, many of his peers were already building résumés on set. He doesn’t sound wistful about it. “I’m really grateful that I had like just a totally normal youth and adolescence,” he says. “I wasn’t thinking about any of this stuff.” Who knows, growing up under the spotlight might have meant he never got here. “Maybe it would have poisoned my brain or something,” he flattens his shiny suit, shrugging. There’s no sense of lost time to recover — only momentum to follow. If his latest role is any indication, it seems Something Very Good Is About to Happen.
‘Something Very Bad Is About to Happen’ is out now on Netflix
