To celebrate The White Lotus Season 3, Aimee Lou Wood swung by BuzzFeed to answer some of our burning questions about the show. 
Taylor Miller / BuzzFeed
Here’s everything she revealed: There are obviously MASSIVE spoilers ahead for The White Lotus Season 3!
1. First, creator Mike White typically casts actors who share “an essence with their character,” so they all have characteristics similar to those of their characters, except for Patrick Schwarzenegger and Michelle Monaghan. Aimee told BuzzFeed, “Patrick is not Saxon in any way, shape, or form. Michelle’s not very Jacqueline either, actually.”
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Aimee Lou Wood / The White Lotus / Instagram / Via instagram.com She added, “The rest of us, there is something, you know, there’s something there, there’s something there that is shared, which is why it can start to get a little bit claustrophobic and a little bit vulnerable.”
2. After binge-watching the first two seasons, Aimee asked her agents to try and get her an audition for Season 3. However, she initially talked herself out of it before deciding to actually go in and audition. She revealed that it reminded her of when she was “very, very, very shy” as a kid, and she skipped out of performing Annie with her drama class. 
Taylor Miller / BuzzFeed “All the girls in the class had to audition for Annie. We had to stand up and sing. I had practiced all week, then I couldn’t do it, and I ran out the room crying,” She explained. “And so sometimes I have to catch myself and go, You’re doing an Annie, and you need to just go for it. This is kind of what I do now. As soon as the doubt creeps in and I give myself all these reasons to not do something, I kind of just have to trick myself into doing it and not leave the room. Stay in the room, sing the song.”
3. In terms of developing the character of Chelsea, Aimee said Mike White really trusted her and the other actors to help create their characters. She explained, “He doesn’t really steer us in any particular direction because I think a lot of his genius lies in his intuition with casting.” Aimee said the best example of this is how he doesn’t do any chemistry reads with the actors before they are cast. 
Fabio Lovino / HBO “I’d never met Walton [Goggins] until the day. The ladies had never met each other. The family had never met each other,” Aimee said.
4. Since they lived and filmed at the same hotel in Thailand, Aimee said it felt like they were living in The Truman Show or a “virtual reality.” In order to escape back into the “real world,” Aimee said she and Leslie Bibb went to Tokyo for a break, and she enjoyed it when the actors’ real families came to visit because it felt like they were reconnecting with their lives outside the show. 
Kevin Winter / GA / The Hollywood Reporter / Getty Images Aimee explained, “Michelle [Monaghan]’s family came for a long time, and that brought the outside world to us, and we were kind of like, ‘What news abroad?’ You know, it was all very like that. And then when Sam [Rockwell] came at the end, Leslie’s partner, who did that incredible monologue, it felt, again, like we got a bit of the outside world coming in. So we just needed context.”
5. The only thing Aimee took from The White Lotus set after filming wrapped was the back of her cast chair that said “Chelsea.” However, now she wishes that she had taken some of Chelsea’s clothes. In particular, Chelsea’s black dress and shoes from Episode 7. 
Fabio Lovino / HBO “I made photo albums for Leslie and Walton and me. So I’ve got a little photo album, but I didn’t take many Chelsea things, and I feel like I need to go back and ask for some Chelsea things,” Aimee said.
6. The wildest fan theory Aimee heard about Season 3 was that the shooter was a monkey. She joked that fans were making “very compelling arguments.” She added, “Like, the theories are so well written that I start to go, I get it, it could be a monkey. And then I’m like, Wait, I know what happens.” 
x.com / Via x.com She added, “I love how Michelle was just like, going out and just go, ‘It’s not the monkey.’ She just couldn’t even be bothered entertaining that. So we’re all like, it’s not, it’s not a monkey.”
7. Since the whole season is supposed to take place over the course of one week, there are some surprising continuity details. For instance, the cast can’t get too tan while filming because it’s only supposed to be a week. Aimee also added that there are some things that are “unavoidable,” like freckles appearing or hair changing color because they spend so much time in the sun in Thailand. 
Fabio Lovino / HBO She added, “Freckles naturally start to come up. Hair changes color in the sun. So there’s a few times where I’m going, I’m brunette, and I’m a redhead, and I’m a blonde. It’s like…and it’s a week.”
8. In order to make the snake bite scene in Episode 3 as realistic as possible, the show 3D printed a copy of Aimee’s leg so the snake could actually bite a leg. However, since the scan was taken before filming began after it was created, it was slightly lighter than Aimee’s skin tone when they filmed the scene because she had gotten a little tan. 
HBO “There’s a picture of me that I put up, and it’s my leg next to the fake leg. Everything. The texture is so perfect, pre-Thailand. I was like, ‘Oh my god,’ because I don’t tan. I was like, Oh my god, I’ve actually got a tan because this is a color match, and look, hello!“
9. During their downtime at the hotel, Aimee said she had a lot of chats with other cast members, BLACKPINK’s Lisa threw “a lot of parties in her room,” and Jason Isaacs was the more “adventurous” one because he did boat trips and more with some of the other cast.
Leslie Bibb / Instagram / Via instagram.com Aimee also said that she and Leslie Bibb threw a party for the cast, too.
10. Aimee accidentally spoiled the season for her flatmate, who came home and saw a bunch of BTS photos she had lying around after the show’s onset photographer gifted her them. “I came back when I saw him at home, he was like, ‘I’m so angry,'” she began. “And I was like, ‘Why?’ And he was like, ‘I’ve seen the photos, Aimee, I’ve seen the photos.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my god, I’m so sorry.'” 
BuzzFeed Celeb / Via youtu.be She added, “I have ruined it for a few people, but it was very much accidental.”
11. And in terms of making sure they don’t post spoilers with their BTS photos on their Instagrams, Aimee said they are “all so paranoid” that they “check about a million times” before they post anything. Hilariously, she revealed that Mike White is the most chill about the cast posting their behind-the-scenes photos.
Aimee Lou Wood / Instagram / Via instagram.com Aimee explained, “I remember being like, ‘Am I allowed to post this picture of Patrick?’ Because Patrick and I started it together, and we ended it together, like my first scene was with him, and my last scene was with him. We took the selfie, and Mike was like, ‘Can I be in it?’ And I was like, ‘Of course, you can be in it. Mike, yes, please.’ And he got in, and I said, ‘But I can’t post it. Can I? Because I mean costume, and I don’t want to give anything away.’ And Mike’s like, ‘You can post it.’ So he was, like, the most chill about it.”
12. Walton Goggins was cast as Rick before Aimee was cast as Chelsea, so she was very much “that specific Rick’s Chelsea.” Aimee said she and Walton were immediately put into a group message together after she was cast, and they hit it off immediately. She recalled a producer telling them, “May you be cosmically linked forever.” 
Stefano Delia / HBO She added, “[Walton] is a Scorpio in real life, and I’m a Scorpio Moon.”
13. Aimee said her “favorite scenes to do” were when Chelsea was just observing and listening to the most out-of-pocket nonsense. She explained, “I always felt like Chelsea’s kind of the audience. She’s not staff, and she’s not a guest, really. She doesn’t understand until very late on why she’s even at the White Lotus … I felt like the narrator a little bit.” 
HBO She continued, saying, “So I always felt like, when I was playing her, that I was the eyes in. I was able to just respond to what was going on. It was like, ‘Wow, the ocean. Wow, Thailand.’ It could be very authentic because that’s how I felt.”
14. If Chelsea could’ve shared scenes with anyone else in Season 3, Aimee would’ve loved for it to have been the ladies — aka Carrie Coon, Leslie Bibb, and Michelle Monaghan — or Parker Posey’s Victoria. She added, “I feel like Chelsea and Victoria could actually get on really well because they’re both kind of nuts.” 
Fabio Lovino / HBO Speaking about wanting to work with Carrie, Leslie, and Michelle more, Aimee said, “I love all three of them. I wish that there’d been a crossover there.”
15. And finally, in terms of characters from previous seasons, Aimee really believes that Chelsea “would be best friends with Mia and Lucia” from Season 2. And she said, “I feel like she could get through to Tanya. I feel like she’s one of the only people that might actually be able to get her kind of in the real world.” 
Fabio Lovino / HBO Aimee continued, saying, “It’s almost like fighting fire with fire. It’s like the two of them together would somehow diffuse the whole madness.”
You can watch Aimee’s full Burning Questions video below: 
BuzzFeed Celeb / Via youtu.be
And be sure to watch The White Lotus Season 3, which is streaming now on Max.
