‘The White Lotus’ Star Simona Tabasco Says Lucia Is ‘Playing the Part of Lucia the Sex Worker’ to Achieve Her Dream

While Sicilian locals Lucia and Mia are wrecking havoc by tempting the wealthy clientele in “The White Lotus” Season 2, Simona Tabasco says her character is “playing the part of Lucia, the sex worker” to get one step closer to achieving her own ambitions.

“I totally think that she’s playing a part — that she was not an escort before, that she is someone who has made a decision about what she wanted to do and found a way to make it happen,” Tabasco told TheWrap. “So what she does is goes through life … and through the White Lotus, maybe in a sometimes clumsy, funny way of playing the part of Lucia, the sex worker, that’s just on a track to achieve her dream one way or another.”

Lucia is in the height of playing this role when she meets Albie, whose innocence and kindness brings back out the vulnerability she had tampered down as she mingled with the other White Lotus guests.

“Albie is so pure, and it’s this purity of heart that she’s attracted to because it resonates to her own [purity], which maybe she still has, maybe she doesn’t,” Tabasco said.

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Her love interest’s gentleness and lack of judgement stands in contrast to the shame and guilt she felt just nights before, after the night of debauchery with Mia, Cam and Ethan took its toll on Lucia.

After Cam agrees to pay for Lucia’s pills — which Tabasco says Lucia had likely just started selling and had “probably never even tried them herself” — Lucia has an emotional breakdown as the MDMA settles down and she awakens in the judgmental Italian culture that reminds her of her own Catholic upbringing, leading her to feel guilty for dragging Mia into this lifestyle.

“Since Mia is one of the characters who’s so pure at the beginning that she surrounds herself with, she just has this contrast between what she’s doing and what she’s seeing outside of her,” Tabasco said. “That probably all meshes up into that moment where she’s just feeling really low and doesn’t want to make her friend follow her down the same path.”

To make matters worse, when Lucia and Mia sneak into Bert’s room to take a shower, Lucia’s gaze locks eyes with a painting of St. Lucia, the patron saint of Sicily who is often depicted by medieval artists by carrying a dish that holds her eyes.

“[It] feels like the the most extreme symbol of judgment is looking upon [her],” Tabasco said. “She feels served and judged by that by the whole situation, by the saint of eyes … it just dawns all upon her so quickly and so harshly where she just she can’t help but feel that judgment upon her.”

While judgement crashed down on Lucia in this moment, Albie comes as a refreshing reminder of who she is when she’s not playing this part of an escort, enabling her to reunite with the simple goodness inside of her.

“It resonates with her how he is such a good person and probably makes her go back to that original state of being where she is a simple, good girl who’s always really hungry,” Tabasco said. “She’s always looking for something, we never know what exactly, but like a lioness it’s always hunting for something, but at the same time, [she is a] vulnerable and simple girl and that’s what resonates between the two and why she’s drawn to Albie.”

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Despite being involved with Albie’s father, Dominic, earlier in their vacation, Lucia is unbothered by the coincidence, according to Tabasco, and is focused on her budding relationship with Albie.

When Albie invites Lucia to serve as an interpreter as his family attempts to reconnect with their Sicilian roots, their trip is disturbed when Alessio, who has previously displayed aggression to Lucia, follows their car.

While Tabasco admits that Lucia initially felt threatened by Alessio, and encouraged the Di Grasso family to speed ahead to lose Alessio, she eventually chooses to confront him and ultimately leave with him against the wishes of Albie, Dominic and Bert.

“Being a girl from the south, she’s used to handling her business by herself,” Tabasco said. “With maybe a little bit of pride, she thinks she should handle this on her own and even if the De Grasso family is a safe harbor … this is something she needs to do on her own.”

Lucia returns to Albie’s room later that evening looking emotionally exhausted, but chooses not to rehash what went down between her and Alessio in those couple hours.

“Albie is her love story in this moment in her life and whatever happened in those couple of hours between leaving him and going back to him is a secret,” Tabasco said.

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While Portia and Jack engage in a flirty fling as they galavant around Palermo, Tabasco says Lucia is interested in something more serious with Albie, even after his stay at the luxury hotel is over.

“She does say that she has always had this dream of going to the United States [and] going to Los Angeles and probably that’s another element that she feels attracted to [in] Albie, because he comes from such a different world of hers, which is Taormina,” Tabasco said.

“She’s probably just down for the ride, not exactly aware of what she’s creating around her of the mess she’s making [or] of the magnitude of the situation she’s in,” Tabasco said. “But she’s all in.”

“The White Lotus” Season 2 finale airs Sunday, Dec. 11, on HBO and streams on HBO Max.