Aimee Lou Wood Brings It Girl Energy to <i>The White Lotus</i>

This story was originally published on Feb. 14, 2025.

This time last year, Aimee Lou Wood had just turned 30, moved into a new home, and then relocated to Thailand for seven months to film the new season of The White Lotus. It was a period of “very big shifts” for the former Sex Education star. But something else also changed as she entered a new decade.

“Every other part that I’ve played recently has been a mom,” the Manchester-raised actress says from a London hotel room. “I was always getting auditions for teenagers and the next minute it was like, ‘She’s a young mom.’”

Sure enough, the now-31-year-old Wood plays a mother in her BBC series Daddy Issues, which she also produces, and the upcoming Netflix drama Toxic Town—a departure from the quirky, bright-eyed high schooler Aimee Gibbs on Sex Ed. Her role in The White Lotus is somewhere in between. “Chelsea was the first part in a while that I’d got through that wasn’t a mom.”

In season 3 of the Emmy-winning HBO series, Wood plays a young woman dating a scruffy 50-something named Rick (Walton Goggins), the kind of odd couple you somehow always run into on vacation. They’re two of the many new characters—and potential murderers and victims—who stay at the White Lotus Thailand wellness resort (filmed at Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui), with a cast including Parker Posey, Blackpink’s Lisa, and a returning Natasha Rothwell. Chelsea is the livelier, cheerier foil to the grumpy and closed-off Rick; she urges him to get a facial or meditate or open up about his feelings. She worries about him when they’re apart (almost like a mother would).

Working on the series created by Mike White, which is known for satirizing social behaviors and relationship dynamics, was life-changing for Wood. “I am not the same person as I was pre-White Lotus,” she says. “I had a lot of reckonings out there. I realized how important my anchors are in life.” At the time, she found herself homesick for her hometown friends and for Manchester. Now, after living in the same hotel and bonding with her co-stars, she sometimes feels homesick for Bangkok.

Wood, who graduated from London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in 2017, has tackled iconic stage roles like Sally Bowles in Cabaret and Sonya in Uncle Vanya, but Sex Education, which ran from 2019 to 2023, was her first onscreen job and earned her widespread renown. While she still holds Aimee Gibbs dear, she was “ready to graduate” from the sex-positive Netflix series, which made stars of its cast, including Wood, Ncuti Gatwa, Emma Mackey, Simone Ashley, Asa Butterfield, and Connor Swindells.

She felt similarly about turning 30. “The 20s are hard. There’s so much pressure to experience and prove yourself, and I feel like everyone in their 30s just chills out of it and is like, “This is who I am. This is where I’m at,’” she says, wearing a crisp white button-down and black tie. “There’s that kind of race before 30 of, ‘Have I done all the things?’”

Wood, who’s also writing her own TV series, has already done plenty. Here, she discusses age gaps, her American accent, and the one thing scarier than nude scenes.

Ring, Bulgari.

You know what? Whoever said that absolutely twisted my words.

I’ll tell you the truth. So, [in the audition] they said, “Can Aimee do one in an American accent and one in her own?” Because the character was originally American, but obviously Mike [White] loves people being very close to their characters. He likes to cast people who share some of the essential qualities of that character. I could do the American accent and I’ve done a play in an American accent for a whole eight months. Mike just wanted me to be from Manchester. He just didn’t see why she needed to be American and why we needed to add that extra layer of distance between me and her. So he was like, “Let’s just make her from Manchester.” And I was like, “Great.” And it worked. But it was so funny because everyone keeps being like, “So you couldn’t do the American accent.” And now I’m like, “I need to correct this guys! I can do an American accent! I swear!”

I also don’t look very American. I always think my teeth just give me away as someone from England. I don’t think I suit an American accent, but I can do it.

I learned it in drama school and I got my badge. We had to do accent exams, and then you get a badge that’d be like, “You can officially do an American accent.” So, yeah.

Jacket and skirt, Acne Studios. Ring and earrings, Bulgari. Shoes, MM6 Maison Margiela.

It’s so intimate because Mike obviously expresses so much of himself through these characters. The show is obviously so acerbic and sharp and it just nails those horrible human fatal flaws like ego and greed. He’s so good at that, but he’s actually a real optimist. In real life, Mike is incredibly hopeful, joyful, mischievous, and playful, which you can feel. But I don’t think the optimism comes through that much in the show. It could be a bit cynical in a great way—that’s what we love about it.

I felt so honored to play Chelsea because it felt like she was that part of Mike that is the optimist, that does have hope, and that leads with her heart. Mike is such an empath and he feels so deeply, so it felt like a privilege to play that facet of him. She’s an actor’s dream because she is just all feeling. She could take a bit more time, I think, to have some thought. She just tends to [be] stream of consciousness and just go for it. And she’s pretty impulsive, but she is an Aries, so that is inevitable.

I just also love her changes, like how she can go from really hurt and wounded, but then as soon as Rick gives her a little bit of hope, she’s absolutely ecstatic again. It’s so fun to play someone who just has boundless energy, which is exactly like Mike. He has boundless energy. I mean, he’s writing, he’s directing, he’s in the edit, but yet every day he’s full of energy. Like Chelsea, she doesn’t run out. She’s got big reserves. But actually it meant that I would get back to my room and I would be so tired. But there is a depth to her too, like there always is with Mike’s characters, and you do think, why is she like that?

Walter Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood in The White Lotus.

There was actually more info originally in the script about their backstory. And classic Mike, he loves mystery, doesn’t he? I think he doesn’t want to ever patronize the audience. So he’s a bit like, “You guys can decide how the heck this happened and add that mystery to it.” But I think that originally in the script they’d met while they were traveling. They did drugs together and she decided that night that was her soulmate. I think she just saw him and went, “Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, found him,” for whatever reason, and that’s just become her life’s mission.

Chelsea the whole time is like, “You’re so mysterious, Rick. You don’t say anything. I need everything out in the open. I’m an Aries.” And actually she’s just as mysterious. So I loved that, and Mike loved that too, this idea that she’s this strange girl that’s just appeared and nobody really knows where she’s come from, but I think she’s a real survivor.

Necklace and earrings, Bulgari. Sweater and skirt, Prada.

When I first read the script, and when I first auditioned, there was a lot [of talk] about Rick being old and Chelsea saying, “People thought you were my dad.” In the original [scene], it was like, “Next they’re going to think you’re my granddad” or whatever. So in my head, Rick was an old man. When I got the part and I was talking to Dave [Bernard], the producer, I was like, “Who’s Rick?” And he was like, “It’s Walton Goggins.” And I was like, “Oh my God.” And then I was like, “Wait, he’s not old!” Because to me, 50 is not old.

I think that was helpful because Chelsea doesn’t see that. She doesn’t notice the age thing, other than when she’s saying, “Get a facial because she thought you were a dad.” She didn’t really care at all. So I couldn’t judge it and I couldn’t care because I just had to think like her. But I also just didn’t feel that age gap. I was hanging out with Leslie [Bibb], Walton, Michelle [Monaghan], and I’m technically a lot younger than them, but I never felt that. They were all like, “Aimee’s an old soul.” I always prefer hanging out with older people anyway, so it just didn’t really strike me as anything.

I’ve still got Chelsea goggles on. I’ve been doing press and people have been going, “The age gap.” And I’m like, “Oh yeah, there’s an age gap. I forgot that.” And then they’re saying, “What does she see in Rick? She’s giving her power and her light away so much.” And I’m like, “No. Rick is my soulmate. He’s amazing!” I just completely bought into Chelsea’s frame of mind, which is that it simply doesn’t matter because they’re soulmates. Whether it’s a 22-year difference or not, it doesn’t matter.

It was so cool because, if I’m really honest, I didn’t understand Lisa’s level of fame. I wasn’t getting it, because she was so down-to-earth and so chill. She said to me and Walton, “If you’ve got any tips…” Because she had so much humility, she was always the one that was inviting people to her room for drinks. She was so social and so cool that I couldn’t match that with “this is a global superstar.”

And then I’d go to the airport and we’d be flying to a different part of Thailand and there’d just be posters of Lisa everywhere. And I’m like, “Guys, that’s Lisa!” And people would be like, “Yes, Aimee. She’s basically like Beyoncé.” And then I would go to the mall and there’d be Lisa T-shirts everywhere.

So it was so hard to match her with her fame because she’s so real and grounded that everyone was like, “How is she like this considering that she’s the biggest star?” But then she just did so amazingly. I remember the first day she was so nervous. And she just came over and she absolutely nailed it.

Jacket, Acne Studios. Ring and earrings, Bulgari.

She’s so great. I love intimacy coordinators, and I think they’re absolutely essential. However, sometimes they can make it more awkward because....If you’re friends with the actors, you’ve already got a dynamic, and then the intimacy coordinator’s coming in and it’s like, we have to act different because it becomes all formal and it becomes quite heavy. And Miriam’s so great because she’s not like that at all. She’s so informed by us. She’s like, “You tell me your vision for this scene, and I will make sure that we can execute that in a safe way where everyone’s happy.”

Walton and I basically designed those scenes. We were like, “This is what we think should happen. This is why we think it’s important.” Because we don’t see a lot of tenderness from Rick to Chelsea the rest of the time. So we have to make sure that when they’re physical and intimate in that way, that you see the love. We don’t want it to be like a fucking gratuitous [sex scene]. We wanted it to be very tender.

Miriam was great with that. And also, she showed me. The main sex scene, she showed it to me at the end. [She said,] “I just want you to watch it. And I want you to know that if you are not happy, we can change it.” That was the first time that had ever happened, that someone had straight away been like, “Come in this room and watch it.” She’s like, “Obviously it’s your body.” It’s still a big deal. Nudity is still a weird thing.

She was very much like, “Is this okay with you?” And Mike was very much like, “Yes, go and show Aimee that scene, and it will be her that can approve. We can cut away before anything happens.” And I was like, “No, I actually think it’s great because it shows a facet of their relationship that we otherwise wouldn’t really get. So it was important to keep those scenes.”

Bodysuit, Victoria Beckham. Jacket, Ralph Lauren. Necklace, ring, and earrings, Bulgari.

Definitely. Sex Ed taught me a lot, and I had to do so much stuff in season 1 that after that, I was like, “Right. Now, we’re going to be more discerning.” Because I was young and I was so looked after, but I think I was very much just like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!” And now, I’m more like, “Do we need this? Is there a way to tell this story with just a look or just a kiss?” I think it’s always about asking, What is the scene saying? Because if we can say it without doing a full-blown nude sex scene, then let’s try that.

I’m definitely more aware of that now. The thing that was interesting about White Lotus is I was not really scared about the intimate scenes, because there’s someone else with you and it’s telling a story. I was so scared about the bikinis.

Thank you. But that was so much scarier to me. It was one of the first things I thought. I got the job and I was like, “Oh my God, I’m so happy!” And then I went, “Oh God, I’m going to have to wear a bikini on camera. I’m going to have to have my body out all the time.” And that scared me more. I remember going to my first fitting and being like, “Alex [Bovaird, the costume designer], I’m scared. I don’t want to be in a bikini all the time because I know what’s going to happen is it’s going to inhibit my performance because I’m going to be thinking about how I look.”

As Chelsea, I cannot be thinking about how I look. She does not give a shite about how she looks. She is not an insecure person about her body. She’s insecure about other things, about her intelligence and everything, but she’s not insecure about that. So I was like, I have to feel confident. If I don’t feel confident and I look like I’m being apologetic for my body, then it won’t work.

Wood as Chelsea in season 3 of The White Lotus.

And Alex was like, “Every single year, the girls in the White Lotus have come in and gone, Can we talk about crochet dresses? Can we talk about sarongs?” It turned out it was just the most common thing. Everyone every season has been like, I want to wear shorts, or, I want to wear this. Actually, when you look back, there aren’t actually that many moments where someone is just in a full-blown bikini. There’s that moment in season 1 with Alexandra Daddario because it’s meant to be like the girls have been mean to her, and then they’re like, “Wow, she’s so hot.” But other than that, there aren’t that many gratuitous bikini shots. So then I was like, “Oh, yeah, that’s true actually.” But I was more scared of that.

I think the boys experienced that so much more than the women. There were nights where me and Michelle would be like, “Are the boys okay?” They’re constantly at the gym. We’d be having our pizza and wine, and the boys would be at the gym. Because I think it is that weird reverse thing in White Lotus world, where actually the men are more of the sexual objects.

Yeah, and they were making sure that they felt confident. I was like, “Whoa, this is pressure.” Because so many people are tuning in for the hot guys. I think they’re all just a bit like, “Ahh!” But I felt bad for them, and I felt so happy that I was playing someone who just doesn’t give a shit about stuff like that.

Vest, jeans, coat, and belt, Gucci. Necklace, Bulgari.

Yeah, I think what’s so amazing about TV is that people are still discovering Sex Education. It’s there forever. I’ve had people that have only just watched it or have only just gotten into it. And so they’re meeting Aimee for the first time and it’s six years later.

There’s always going to be a tie to that show. A hundred percent. I remember the day that they called me and they were like, “We’re not doing season 5. That’s it. [After] season 4, it’s over.” And I felt so free. I was so free because I was ready. I was ready to graduate. And to grow up, actually, because it was weird playing something so much younger than me for so long, and I was just out-aging her and outgrowing her quite a lot, even though I love her to pieces.

I think we were all ready to graduate. But then there was this other thing in my tummy that’s like, “I’ll never be Aimee again,” and I wasn’t ready. I was like, “No, I didn’t get to say my goodbye,” because we thought we were doing season 5. But it was the right time to end it. And then there was all this talk at one point where people were like, “There’s going to be a spin-off.” I was like, “If there was a spin-off where they grew up, would I do it? Would I go back and play her?” And then I felt really weird about it.

I also believe in “That’s done now, and [move] forward,” but at the same time I’m like, “I don’t know. Because I just want to see where she would end up.” That’s why I love films because they’re contained and there’s a beginning and a middle and an end, and you know your character’s full arc. Same with a play. You just know what happens to them. That’s the end of the story. Whereas with TV, because it goes on, you don’t know when your final moment with that character is going to be, which is quite hard.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Hair by Halley Brisker of The Wall Group; makeup by Lucy Burt of The Wall Group using Lancôme; nails by Sabrina Gayle of ARCH; styling assistant: Sabrina Leina; movement director: Liam Hill of Dust Bunnies.

Lead image: Vest, jeans, coat, belt, Gucci. Necklace, Bulgari.