Aimee Lou Wood has said that, upon hearing that White Lotus creator Mike White had “fought” to cast her, she couldn’t help but feel she wasn’t wanted by HBO due to her looks.
Wood played yoga teacher Chelsea in the latest season of the hit series. Ahead of being cast in the show, though, the former Sex Education star was told that White had battled for her to play the character despite protestations from the cable channel.
The actor said that, despite knowing the comment came “from the nicest place”, it internally made her doubt her appearance. She told GQ that she thought: “Mike had to say ‘Please let me have the ugly girl!’”
Wood has also spoken about how she feels that her physical appearance can distract from her work, with viewers often commenting on her teeth instead of her acting.
She said: “It makes me really happy that it’s symbolising rebellion and freedom, but there’s a limit. The whole conversation is just about my teeth, and it makes me a bit sad because I’m not getting to talk about my work. They think it’s nice because they’re not criticising.”
Wood continued: “I don’t know if it was a man would we be talking about it this much? It’s still going on about a woman’s appearance.”
The actor is no stranger to being in the spotlight or to appearing in explicit scenes after playing Aimee in Netflix series Sex Education
She has previously described feeling “exposed” during the first season of the hit Netflix show as “no one else in the main cast actually went to the extremes” that she did.
But during filming of The White Lotus, Wood said she relied on support and advice from her female co-stars, Michelle Monaghan and Carrie Coon.
A private dinner between the three, where they discussed “whether nudity made sense for their storylines”, made her feel much more comfortable than she had in Sex Education.
