Alexandra Daddario Was Never The Same After True Detective
Few actors have earned their place in Hollywood as much as Alexandra Daddario. She's been active in the film and TV industry since the early 2000s, but only recently garnered the acclaim and recognition she's long deserved. In the past few years, the New York City native has become one of the most promising stars in television with major roles in HBO's critically acclaimed anthology series "The White Lotus" and AMC's adaptation of Anne Rice's "Mayfair Witches."
However, Daddario entered the mainstream almost a decade ago when she played a minor but memorable role in another anthology series from HBO: "True Detective." The first season stars Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey as homicide detectives investigating a string of unsolved murders. Daddario's role as Lisa Tragnetti, the secret lover of Harrelson's ostensibly wholesome character, whose tenure on the show includes a scene of nudity that almost immediately propelled Daddario's notoriety to new levels.
Although some actors would balk at success coming from a role as sexually explicit as Daddario's in "True Detective," she handled her future with grace and patience as she awaited an opportunity to show audiences that she's more than eye candy for HBO audiences. Though it wasn't an easy journey at times, these are all the ways in which "True Detective" shaped Daddario's career.
She was desperate for darker work after the Percy Jackson movies
Prior to appearing in "True Detective" during her late 20s, Alexandra Daddario's interest in the entertainment industry came early and she studied professional acting in school. While she made early appearances in films like "The Squid and the Whale" and TV shows like "Law & Order" and "The Sopranos," her big break came in her early 20s when she was cast as Annabeth Chase in the 2010 film adaptation of Rick Riordan's "Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief."
Sadly, the film and its 2013 sequel, "Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters," were criticized for being too similar to the "Harry Potter" films– they share a director in Chris Columbus and feature a trio of teenagers, two boys and one girl, encountering magic and alternate worlds. In an interview with InStyle in 2023, Daddario revealed that despite landing a huge blockbuster franchise, she wasn't ready to rest on her laurels. "I'm very, very proud of what I've accomplished, and I'm grateful," she said. "But it's a ladder."
It wasn't long until Daddario's resume diverged from the teen fantasy where she started out. She appeared in horror films like "Bereavement" and "Texas Chainsaw." She even made a guest appearance on FX's "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," which was a role she drove four hours overnight from Las Vegas to Los Angeles to audition for since she's a self-proclaimed huge fan of the show.
Daddario was nervous about joining True Detective
In 2013, Alexandra Daddario was announced as a cast member on HBO's new anthology series, "True Detective." The season's cast included veterans like Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson, and Michelle Monaghan. Although Daddario had shared the screen with numerous A-list stars in the past, she felt some pressure when she joined the HBO series.
"I always have a bit of trepidation before I start anything just because I want to do well," she told Esquire. "You want to do a great job and you want to impress people." However, she also kept her expectations in check.
Although the opportunities she was offered after "True Detective" were massive, at the time she didn't anticipate much from the series, seeing the role as just any other job. This attitude also bled into her social life during shooting; she wasn't on set often given her smaller role and therefore did not become close with the cast. Thankfully, this didn't harm her overall experience, as she continued explaining to Esquire, "Having dinner with somebody you've looked up to your whole life is quite a memorable thing."
She wasn't fazed by having to act in the nude
While Alexandra Daddario's "True Detective" character plays an integral role in the downfall of Woody Harrelson's character, many fans of the show remember her performance for a much less sophisticated reason. In Episode 2, Harrelson's Marty Hart visits Lisa's house and the two have sex, shattering the audience's view of Hart as a family man with strict morals. In this scene, Daddario bares it all as she seductively undresses for a handcuffed Hart.
Despite the scene's explicit nature, Daddario still felt it was justified within the context of the story and was mostly just happy to be playing a role that was so different than anything else she had done. She also credited scene partner Woody Harrelson with making her feel comfortable, which she at other times described as nerve-racking.
Unsurprisingly, the scene generated a lot of attention on the Internet, which Daddario found flattering despite being something she actively tries to ignore. Although she has no regrets about the scene, Daddario confessed to Men's Journal, "I think that I hadn't been that aware of my sex appeal prior to that ... it can be negative, some of the attention, and so I try to ignore some of the more negative aspects of it."
Daddario defended True Detective against accusations of misogyny
Despite the critical success of "True Detective," garnering nominations at both the Emmys and Golden Globes, the show's first season had its critics regarding its portrayal of women. Particularly, one article for The New Yorker cited Alexandra Daddario's character as an example of the show's gratuitous nudity, and accused the show of featuring underwritten female characters who reveal more of their physical bodies than of their personalities.
In an interview with The Daily Beast, Daddario rejected these claims of "True Detective" being misogynistic, saying, "I feel like the story was about these two flawed men, and the women — especially my character and Lili Simmons' character — were there to propel their storylines forward." She further explained that she and the other women on the show also experienced a surge of interest from Hollywood after their appearances, which gave them more power in showbiz rather than less, as the New Yorker article suggested.
Though opinions of "True Detective" vary, Daddario nevertheless remains proud of her work on the show, particularly her explicit scene, though she's also going to make sure that her future children never lay eyes on it.
She booked San Andreas thanks to her newfound fame
Alexandra Daddario wasn't expecting the reaction to her nude scene in "True Detective," but if she had any mixed feelings about acting in the nude, those were quickly dispelled within 24 hours. As she later recounted about the immediate attention, "[my manager] calls me in the morning after the episode aired and she was like ... 'The phone won't stop ringing!' And all of a sudden, everyone in town wanted to meet with me" (via Collider).
She continued to particularly credit her work on "True Detective" for creating a massive upswing in the opportunities she was offered in Hollywood and found herself auditioning for more adult-centric films. In fact, weeks after her risqué appearance on "True Detective," she was cast as one of the leads in the 2015 action movie "San Andreas," starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
In the film, The Rock portrays a firefighter who becomes a hero during a massive earthquake in Los Angeles, and Daddario plays his daughter. While she felt distant from the "True Detective" Season 1 cast, she spoke highly of working with The Rock, and The Rock felt the same about his "San Andreas" co-star. The two of them worked together again not long after their first collaboration.
Her body remained a major focus in Baywatch
In 2017, Alexandra Daddario reunited with Dwayne Johnson for "Baywatch," a film adaptation of the iconic television series. In the film, Daddario portrays Summer Quinn, the role originally held by Nicole Eggert in the TV show. Daddario's casting was announced by Johnson himself via Instagram, where he praised her one-of-a-kind personality and talent.
True to the nature of a project like "Baywatch," this role wouldn't exactly stray from Daddario's previous experience of getting a lot of attention for her body, albeit for different reasons. While the R-rated film didn't feature any nudity from the actress, she still had to put in a lot of work to maintain a more athletic physique for the film. Speaking to Women's Health about her preparation for "Baywatch," Daddario said "I started doing weight training, which I had never done before, and I saw a huge difference. It was kind of amazing, the transformation I went through," (via People).
Luckily, Daddario has a great partner-in-crime with physical trainer Patrick Murphy, who she began working with on "Baywatch" and still actively trains with as of 2023.
She felt Baywatch negatively affected her career
While "Baywatch" seemed to come naturally after the success Alexandra Daddario achieved with "True Detective," the film itself was a critical failure and a commercial disappointment. Unsurprisingly, "Baywatch" garnered accusations of sexism and objectification similar to those directed at "True Detective," with Rolling Stone writing in their two-star review that the film's female actors, including Daddario, "are left trying to fight their way out of various babe stereotypes."
Daddario also found herself falling into a pattern of projects that required her to flaunt her body. Also in 2017, Daddario co-starred with Kate Upton in "The Layover," in which they play roommates vying for the attention of an attractive seatmate after their vacation flight is rerouted due to a hurricane. At the time, Daddario spoke highly of the film's female-centric story, and also felt like she was getting used to being considered sexy, telling Collider, "It wasn't something that I tried to do, so I embrace it, to a certain extent."
Years later, Daddario reflected on this era in her career, and while she appreciated the rise in her public profile, she wondered if her choice of projects had maybe led her astray. By the time the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Daddario started to feel like her career had hit a wall and found herself dissatisfied with the projects she was offered, which included several direct-to-video-on-demand releases such as "Can You Keep a Secret?" and "We Summon the Darkness" in 2019.
Lost Girls & Love Hotels brought attention back to her acting
Although Alexandra Daddario remained booked and busy over the next few years after "Baywatch" and "The Layover," it wasn't until 2020 that she captured the attention of film critics once again. "Lost Girls & Love Hotels" features Daddario in a starring role as Margaret, an American teacher living in Tokyo who enters into a romance with a member of the Yakuza. The role features Daddario acting nude for the first time since her infamous "True Detective" scene.
The movie itself received mixed reviews, with some criticizing its meaningless story and others praising its dark tone. However, some reviewers praised Daddario's performance, with Film Hounds writing, "She quite possibly delivers her best performance to date ... it's solely because of her that the movie just about succeeds." Other reviews praised Daddario's compelling and thoughtful contributions to the character of Margaret, even when they had few good things to say about the rest of the film.
Although "Lost Girls & Love Hotels" was still taking advantage of Daddario's looks and willingness to bare it all for the plot, it signaled the beginning of a change she hadn't experienced since "True Detective," where this time around the attention was on her acting rather than her anatomy.
The pandemic gave her a chance to get personal with her audience
While Alexandra Daddario felt like her career was stagnating post "Baywatch," the entire entertainment industry went on pause when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down productions across the globe. Like many other celebrities, Daddario took this opportunity to reach out to her audience and began posting vlogs on YouTube featuring herself, her roommates, and their various quarantine activities.
Many of these videos were successful in strengthening the connection between Daddario and her fanbase, thanks to charming Q&A videos as well as sneak peeks into Daddario's day-to-day life in quarantine. Although there was still media attention surrounding Daddario's body based on some of these videos, Daddario certainly seemed in on the joke, with several instances of her openly mocking people's obsession with her looks. In one video going through her wardrobe, Daddario jokingly referenced her "True Detective" past: "I know what you're googling. I see what you're googling."
Surprisingly, Daddario remains active with her vlogging, albeit not as active as she was during the height of lockdown; her most recent video was uploaded in September 2023. It wouldn't be long after the pandemic, however, until Daddario found a similar connection with audiences through her performances.
The White Lotus finally helped her feel understood
After many years of trying to recapture the success she found on "True Detective" in the film world, Alexandra Daddario found herself joining another anthology series on HBO in 2021 with "The White Lotus," which centers on the various employees and guests of a fictional resort and their intertwining narratives. In the Season 1 ensemble, Daddario plays Rachel, a newlywed on her honeymoon who starts to second-guess whether marrying Jake Lacy's character, an unfathomable jerk, was a good idea.
The first season of "The White Lotus" premiered to critical acclaim and garnered a whole bunch of Emmy nominations, with Daddario netting one for outstanding supporting actress in a limited series or anthology, which she lost to co-star Jennifer Coolidge. As a whole, fans responded positively to Daddario's performance as Rachel — who we can safely say is more nuanced and relatable than her character in "True Detective."
As Daddario told The Hollywood Reporter, the role came at a point in her career where she felt like she was lacking direction, and drew upon that in her performance, saying, "Like my character, there have definitely been times I felt misunderstood or not breaking through and I feel like I took it all somewhat in stride." With critical approval and an Emmy nomination behind her, Daddario's future was entirely up to her now.
Alexandra Daddario has spoken out in support of intimacy coordinators
Although Alexandra Daddario has spoken positively about her experience acting in the nude on "True Detective," in the past few years there's been a reckoning of how scenes like that are handled in Hollywood. After the discourse that surrounded her and fellow co-stars' nude scenes on the HBO show, it makes sense that Daddario would be in support of an entertainment industry that treated women with more respect.
She suggested as much when it comes to intimacy coordinators, who were officially recognized in the renegotiated contracts of SAG-AFTRA following the 2023 strikes. Intimacy coordinators are defined as individuals on set who choreograph and monitor nude or sex scenes to make sure actors are comfortable and safe.
As Daddario admitted to InStyle, she's all for the changes, saying, "I think it was such a long time coming that these things had to happen. And even if some people feel like it's sort of an overcorrection, I think it's much better than not doing anything about it." Hopefully, in the future, actors like Daddario won't have to rely on only their co-stars to make them feel safe while filming scenes like her famous tryst in "True Detective."
She finally got a chance to lead her own TV show with Mayfair Witches
The past few years have seen Alexandra Daddario transform from an oft-forgotten actress who once undressed for HBO to one of the most promising and talented television stars in the current media landscape. While her success will always be partially owed to the attention she got from "True Detective," it's clear that Daddario is much prouder to be recognized for her hard work and commitment to projects, and not simply how she looks with no clothes on.
This is all on display in Daddario's most recent television venture, starring in AMC's adaptation of Anne Rice's "Mayfair Witches," following up on Season 1 of another Rice adaptation, "Interview with the Vampire." Playing the role of Dr. Rowan Fielding, a woman who discovers her connection to a dynasty of witches, was one of the biggest challenges Daddario has ever faced, as she told The A.V. Club, "I had ... never been the lead of my own TV show, which felt cool. I'm looking for anything instinctually right at the moment, and this did it for me."
Considering her experience adapting books to screen with the "Percy Jackson" films, her innate ability to capture the audience's attention in "True Detective," and her skills at connecting with audiences thanks to "The White Lotus," "Mayfair Witches" seems like the perfect amalgamation of all she's worked towards. The question now is, why did it have to take so long?