Aubrey Plaza is perhaps our most idiosyncratic star, though she insists she’s “so much more normal than people think I am” in a new GQ profile. “Look at me, I’m eating yogurt,” she says, her approximation of average (despite later admitting she’s “not necessarily your average Jane”). All of this would be a lot more believable if she hadn’t already admitted to psychologically torturing her co-star Adam DiMarco on the set of the second season of The White Lotus.
Yes, in a totally normal move, Plaza gaslit DiMarco into thinking he was being harassed by an anonymous malevolent witch. Stuck living on the set of the show’s titular hotel, Plaza alleviated her own boredom by leaving reed diffusers “arranged in a large Blair Witch–style symbol” on the floor of DiMarco’s dressing room—and her own. She escalated the prank by slipping “ominous messages that read here lies…” under people’s doors.
It seems obvious, even to someone with casual knowledge of her personality, that Plaza was the culprit, but then, she’s also an actor. On top of targeting herself, she also convinced DiMarco “over bottles of red wine” that it wasn’t her. She continued to deny her involvement even when hotel staff provided video evidence of the sabotage. “I was a suspicious character for these Italians,” she says. “They thought I was sketchy. Which I am.”
Now, though, she is willing to own up to her misdeeds: “Adam was so innocent, like a baby bird. It was really sick, what I was doing to him. I got him to the brink of a psychological break.” DiMarco agrees: “I was definitely questioning my reality for a while there,” he tells the outlet. “I didn’t know who to trust. It was like Murder On The Orient Express. Everyone was the murderer.” What’s a little harmless hazing amongst friends, right?