In the hotly anticipated second season of HBO’s anthology series The White Lotus, Haley Lu Richardson plays Portia, the fledgling millennial assistant to Jennifer Coolidge’s demanding, mommy-issue-afflicted Tanya McQuoid-Hunt, the sole character from the show’s award-winning first season to return for the second, set this time at the White Lotus resort in Sicily. Aubrey Plaza, meanwhile, plays Harper Spiller, a brusque, well-meaning employment lawyer whose status anxiety comes to a boil on vacation with her husband and his crude, financier friend Cameron. Though Richardson and Plaza didn’t share a single scene in the show’s season season, which premiered last Sunday, the pair became fast friends on set, one of the many topics of discussion in a hilarious and wide-ranging conversation that touches on stalking, mothering their respective pets, and why no one’s really a “normie.”
