Scrolling Through TikTok With Adam DiMarco
The White Lotus’ Adam DiMarco is Television’s favorite Nice Guy.
Words by Dio Anthony
Everyone’s talking about The White Lotus. Name another series so effortlessly engraved in collective conversation. In a world of content overload—you can’t. 32- year-old Adam DiMarco plays Nice Guy Albie Di Grasso, the subject of many conversations around gender respectability, a large topic within this season’s cast of characters. Ahead of the finale, and on the cusp of knowing who those bodies in the water actually are—DiMarco sits down for a humbling conversation on finding balance, White Lotus’ dedicated fan base on TikTok and everyone’s new ideal vacation spot —Italy.
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DIO ANTHONY: So just like everyone else, I'm anxiously awaiting for the finale, but also savoring every minute of the show.
ADAM DIMARCO: Oh, hell yeah. [Laughs]
ANTHONY: I thought I'd start off with a little icebreaker. There's so many breakfast and dinner scenes and just many food scenes in general. I'm wondering how much of this amazing food did you actually eat? And in comparison, I'm wondering how good the actual food at the resort you were staying at was?
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DIMARCO: That’s a great question! [Laughs] Well, in the scenes we were just kind of nibbling at the stuff, because you do so many takes, you can't just be eating a full croissant every time. There was one scene though, where Haley Lou was eating these apricots in it, but she made the choice to have a full one. By the end of that scene, she just felt so sick. And it was her birthday that day. I gave her a birthday gift which was a box of apricots, [laughs], tied up with a little ribbon. Then I gave her an actual gift after that. But at the hotels we were staying at—because we actually traveled around and stayed at a few different spots. The one you’re referring to San Domenico, we were there before tourist season and before the hotel was fully operational in a way. I think we might’ve rented it out for the production. The food there was a bit different than most traveling there would think. Meghann Fahy and I found this breakfast hack at one point. There was one room that kind of turned into a cafeteria for everyone. Our hack was that we would order off-menu, get as much stuff as we wanted, and it always came to like 20 or so euros. Weirdly! The bill always said ‘open food’. We were neighbors at the hotel, so we’d text each other in the mornings like—hey, you up? Want to get open food? Yeah, I’m down to get open food, let's go. You could get coffee, tea, eggs, bacon, fruits, and pancakes!
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ANTHONY: In other words, the works!
DIMARCO: Yes, the grand slam, The Four Seasons Grand slam, and they never caught on to our scheme.
ANTHONY: That’s amazing. You're king of these little BTS tidbits. I feel every time I'm reading a new interview I'm like, oh, wow? that happened? Too cool.
DIMARCO: Oh, really? Oh, thank you. BTS King, I love that.
ANTHONY: So the internet is talking about how Aubrey Plaza convinced you that witches were real with this elaborate prank that she pulled on you during production. That’s the latest bit of news out of The White Lotus universe..
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DIMARCO: Well, first of all, okay…Witches are real. There are people out there who call themselves witches and actively practice witchcraft. So she didn't convince me of anything. [Laughs]
ANTHONY: Great, because that was precisely my question—if pre Aubrey Plaza prank, you believed that witches were real. I agree, they very much are.
DIMARCO: I mean, there's all kinds of people out there. [Laughs] When it comes to her prank, I definitely played into it a little bit, you know, it was keeping things spicy during filming. I just kind of went full Sherlock Holmes mode. Have you ever listened to Serial or one of those investigative podcasts? I kind of treated it like one of those. I even debated at one time making a podcast about getting to the bottom of it. Having interviews with different cast mates about it, and interrogating them..
ANTHONY: Wow, that would’ve gone viral.
DIMARCO: I should have done it! Like a parody podcast…
ANTHONY: Genius.
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DIMARCO: Yeah. It's truly a really long, complicated story that involves so many of the cast members. Because there were a lot of weird things going on at that hotel. It's definitely haunted. Beatrice Grannò who plays Mia, had mentioned once that she had found some weird writing at one point in her room, which could have been from a previous guest or something too. But everything just kind of tied together, in this tangled web that I just had to uncover. It was kind of a fun little side mission. [Laughs].
ANTHONY: I think it's funny how an actor can share tidbits from their experience and it becomes this really big press story and suddenly you find yourself in that narrative. Like, now I'm literally asking you about your stance on witches..
DIMARCO: [Laughs], That’s a good point. Have you seen the movie The Witch?
ANTHONY: Plenty of times! That movie is a perfect movie, I think.
DIMARCO: I really enjoyed it. I've seen it a couple of times, maybe three times. The little symbol Aubrey made in my dressing room out of incense, these pretty long sticks was something that looked like it was from that movie. [Laughs] I was like, okay, I’m like 99% sure this is just a cast mate prank thing. But on the off chance that it isn’t, let me just make sure.
ANTHONY: Nevertheless a good story, right?
DIMARCO: Yeah! Then Aubrey and I really started to become closer friends after that which was cool.
ANTHONY: Are you on TikTok at all?
DIMARCO: I think I've made one. No, actually I haven't made a TikTok. I was in one TikTok that my friend made one time that went viral or something. But I don’t post TikToks, no. Once a month I will go on there and just look at my DMs, and watch the ones that my friends have sent me. I don’t really scroll or anything.
ANTHONY: Okay, because right now my For Your Page on TikTok is what people are calling White Lotus Tok, which is basically full of theories about the show. I was curious—if someone were to scroll through your FYP, what would they come across?
DIMARCO: Do you want me to do it right now?
ANTHONY: Oh, yeah. Perfect! Let’s do it right now.
DIMARCO: Okay. Let's see. Can you hear that?
ANTHONY: I heard like a second of a snippet. What was that?
DIMARCO: It’s an indigenous content creator doing a meme where they're like flying on an eagle or something? The next one is Walter White from Breaking Bad meets The Walking Dead—but in high school? [Laughs]. The next one is I’m guessing an influencer doing a thirst trap.
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ANTHONY: Okay, interesting..go on..
DIMARCO: Okay. Then we got some college hockey. No, not college. It’s the Western Hockey League. I’m Canadian and I love hockey, but I don’t follow the WHL like that.
ANTHONY: So you’ve got a well rounded FYP..
DIMARCO: We have a couple more. Instagram baddies. Sorry, TikTok Baddies. And then someone making indie music using a pretty similar setup that I have, which is kind of weird. See, this is why—wait and now we have some DJ Khaled content too.
ANTHONY: No food content?
DIMARCO: We have Renaldo… This is fun! I should go on TikTok!
ANTHONY: [Laughs] Yeah, you should. It’s an actual time sucker but it’s better than TV.
DIMARCO: Oh, more hockey! Matthew Tkachuk just hit someone on his former team in the open ice and that's an interference penalty. More hockey and some basketball. Yeah, no food…
ANTHONY: Are you a big hockey fan?
DIMARCO: I’m a Toronto Maple Leafs fan. I actually grew up playing with the captain of their team, John Tavares. My heart just gets broken every year during the playoffs when they lose in the first round. So I've become a little bit less emotionally invested lately. I just want to see them succeed so badly. Oh wait, I finally found one that's a White Lotus one.
ANTHONY: Oh wow, what’s it about?
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DIMARCO: Okay, so this is Theo James and Will Sharpe arguing in episode five at the winery about how Theo’s character left the condom wrapper.
ANTHONY: Ah yes, the condom wrapper on the couch incident. A point of no return sadly..
DIMARCO: That was a great scene.
ANTHONY: Amazing. That's so surreal. Just scrolling through TikTok and coming across that..
DIMARCO: Yeah. It's really cool just seeing everyone else's scenes in the show because we weren't there for the majority of them. There's not too many overlapping storylines this season. That’s been my favorite part about watching the show. Seeing everyone’s amazing work that I wasn’t there to see on set. Scenes that I just read in the scripts and I’m now watching them come to life and executed in an amazing way. I can’t wait to see what they do for season three.
ANTHONY: Right, but we’re still waiting to see what’s happening in the next week! [Laughs] Was there a landmark or sight in Italy that completely took your breath away? A standout moment from the trip and the whole experience that kind of altered your brain chemistry in a positive way? Something that might’ve stayed with you?
DIMARCO: Oh man, everything altered my brain chemistry in a positive way over there. The views are insane. Let me think—we were staying at hotel La Calette in Cefalù, and there was a swimming area just down these stairs that was really breathtaking. I actually had a friend who went to Sicily and I recommended the spot because now I’m like the Sicily recommendations guy. [Laughs] But I was there for a long time, so I do have some really good reccs.
ANTHONY: Goes to Sicily once..
DIMARCO: [Laughs] Do you want the exact coordinates? I can give you the exact coordinates.
ANTHONY: Give us the details.
DIMARCO: So there's this road called Via Prezi. It’s kind of a back road near hotel La Calette. There’s a swimming pool and just north of it there’s a road that winds down. You’re going to want to follow that all the way down to the water. There’s an amazing swimming hole there, and you can swim around the corner of the rocks. I went down there with Aubrey, Theo, Meghann and Will a couple of times for some really relaxing swims. You could see fish swimming, and I think Theo had a snorkel that I borrowed at one point. Then our hotel in Noto, the San Corrado di Noto was also insane. It felt to me like the real White Lotus. I remember thinking why didn’t they shoot it here? I mean, I get why they didn’t. But you know how you were saying there are so many breakfast and dinner scenes? Michael Imperioli and I were always joking. I’d say dad, why don’t we leave the hotel and go get dinner in a restaurant? [Laughs] He’d say, Albie, why would we leave? That was so true. They have the best chefs in the whole world at this hotel. Why would we ever want to leave? We’d joke that it was probably a triple Michelin star Chef’s cooking that we were enjoying. But, this hotel was pretty isolated and none of us had rented a car at this point. I think production supplied one that was manual and none of us could drive stick. [Laughs] I’m just talking about myself, Meghann, Haley and Leo. So we ended up having a lot of our meals there, and it was really the most beautiful kind of luxury resort ever. Man, I really got sidetracked with this question didn’t I?
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ANTHONY: [Laughs] please go on. Again, you’re giving us all these behind the scenes tidbits.. remember I said you’re the BTS king. This is great.
DIMARCO: The sunsets were also amazing as well. I’m a big sunsets guy. I love to go sunsets mode. There were some pretty breathtaking sunsets with Mount Etna in the background. I cried the first night when I was there once I saw the view I had from my room.
ANTHONY: I feel like few shows really make a dent now in the cultural sphere. White Lotus is one of those rare shows that everyone's talking about when it's happening.
DIMARCO: It really lends itself to discussion as well..
ANTHONY: Have you been recognized in LA these last few weeks? Since this show is on the very top of people’s minds.
DIMARCO: It’s been happening in a variety of ways. Someone yelled White Lotus! at the top of their lungs and just pointed at me at one point. I was like, hi, please don't yell at me. [Laughs] Most people don't yell at me. People are pretty nice and friendly about it. They love the show, which is really, really nice to hear. But yeah, if you go grocery shopping, sometimes people will stare at you.
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ANTHONY: Are you doing the whole sunglasses and cap thing at this point?
DIMARCO: Oh, no, no, no. [Laughs] Do you know Erewhon?
ANTHONY: I don’t live in LA currently, but I do, yes.
DIMARCO: I was grabbing lunch with a friend at Erewhon and Jared Leto was there and he was going cap and sunglasses mode. But, like, he was staring at me?
ANTHONY: [Laughs]
DIMARCO: [Laughs] I thought– is he staring at me because I’m staring at him? Or is he into the show? I don’t know.
ANTHONY: I think he was a minute from yelling White Lotus at the top of his lungs to you.
ANTHONY: I feel like F. Murray Abraham’s character is always trying to instill wisdom into both his son and grandson whether it lands or not. What's the best single piece of advice you feel like you've been given in your life? A little deep, I know..
DIMARCO: That is getting deep. Hmm.
ANTHONY: Sorry for going all Diane Sawyer on you.
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DIMARCO: Do you have one yourself?
ANTHONY: I have a few. I’m sure there’s a more eloquent way of saying this but, you know how when we’re in a negative headspace, we tend to lash out on those closest to us. They get it the worst, but they are usually the ones we should be protecting from that energy, because they are the ones that have the most love for us. They are always there and because of that proximity, they get the good and the ugly. Way deeper than you probably expected to get on this call, but that’s me! [Laughs]
DIMARCO: Yeah, you’ve really got me taking a deep dive into my psyche.
ANTHONY: I tend to do that, we can come back to it–If you had to choose— what would this period in your life be called? Think of it like a book or a song. What would be the title?
DIMARCO: New Beginnings.
ANTHONY: I love that. This an overshare, but that’s the title of episode 1, season 2 of 90210. So it feels fitting.
DIMARCO: Part Two. [Laughs] Featuring Akon and Young Jeezy.
ANTHONY: I’ve asked this question a lot, and that’s, the best title I've gotten so far.
DIMARCO: [Laughs] For the record, I've never met Akon or Young Jeezy.
ANTHONY: Continuing on my Diane Sawyer mode—in what ways do you find peace every day? Is there something you consistently come back to that always makes you feel centered and grounded?
DIMARCO: Having certain rituals that work for you. Even if it's something as simple as like, every morning I go for a walk before I have my morning Matcha or something. I find peace internally. I also have a really great support network of friends and family around me that I talk to a lot. I think balance is important. If I spend too much time alone, then I'm really craving that social interaction. And if I'm doing too much socializing, I'm just craving my alone time. I think I find peace through balance. That applies to everything. To diet, too. I let myself indulge in certain things, a healthy amount.
ANTHONY: Everything in moderation..
DIMARCO: There is a lot of truth to that. Moderation is the key.
ANTHONY: I agree. Maybe you’re the one giving out the advice VS receiving it. Do you have an everyday ritual that you do?
DIMARCO: I like to go on walks. I like to check in with my friends a lot. I listen to music. For me it depends on the season. Especially in Canada, in the winters I’m indoors more, so my rituals change. Right now my daily ritual lately has been to work on music and come up with some demos. Even if I never release them. Sometimes it’s fun to just get those creative juices flowing. My friend's mom has this used bookstore in Toronto called The Great Escape. Shout out to her and the bookstore! She gave me this really great book to read and it was called The Courage to Be Disliked. It’s a really great read—I took a lot of things away from it and I’m still kind of you know…
ANTHONY: Thinking about it?
“I find peace internally.”
DIMARCO: Yeah, it’s been something that I find myself still thinking about sometimes. I also feel best when I’m in the present moment, fully present, rather than distracted by a phone or something. I visited the Getty recently and just turned off my phone. I grabbed one of the brochures with a map, the one in Italian and it felt so fun. It felt like I was back in Sicily because my Canadian phone didn’t always work when I was there which forced me to be present and take in my surroundings.
ANTHONY: Finally—what are your Holiday plans?
DIMARCO: I’ve been really into re-watching all the Harry Potter films lately and Voldemort’s Ralph fiennes is doing a play that I want to see.
ANTHONY: Now I have to ask, what house in the Hogwarts universe would you belong to?
DIMARCO: Well, I’ve taken the test that determines which house a few times, and the most recent and most common answer is Gryffindor. I’ve gone through every phase—but Hufflepuff. How about you?
ANTHONY: I’ve never taken the official test, but I’m told I’m a Hufflepuff. Which is kind of annoying I guess, but also cool? I’m not sure how to feel about it. I guess I just give off those vibes.
DIMARCO: That’s a pretty common response for a Hufflepuff so they may be right. [Laughs]. Aside from that I’ll head back to Toronto and spend the holidays with my family, which I do every year. Then probably swing by that bookstore again and grab another book.
ANTHONY: Another book to keep thinking about. Perfect.
Photography by Emilia Staugaard, Styling by Jake Sammis, Written by Dio Anthony, Grooming by Candice Birns
This interview has been edited and condensed.