Alexandra Daddario is no stranger to turning heads in a bikini. The actress notably did it on the small screen as part of the cast of the first season of Mike White’s The White Lotus. She’s channeled the infamous moment in a video with her co-star Sydney Sweeney in the past, but this week she headed to the beach where she proved she still knows how to make a statement while literally just walking into the water.
It may not seem like a major life skill, but you try ambling into the water with a camera pointed at you sometime and see how easy it really is. Of course, I think the major reason Daddario went viral in the first place is because she makes a swimwear amble look easy, but I honestly think that’s where the acting piece comes in.
All this video would need to make this moment perfect would be to add in the White Lotus music from Cristobal Tapia de Veer, which will doubtless be coming to TikTok shortly. Still, I quite like just hearing the sound of the waves and the calming sounds of wind whipping along the shoreline as Daddario gracefully wanders into the water.
To note, it’s been a couple of years since the HBO series aired its first season. (A second season was also already commissioned, with The White Lotus Season 3 on the way.) Yet the scene in question has lived on thanks to HBO making it available for anyone to watch anytime, and you don’t even need a Max subscription.
If you haven’t caught the scene, Daddario’s character Rachel briefly gets trolled by some teen girls (played by Sydney Sweeney and Brittany O’Grady) but doesn’t take the comments lying down. Instead, she pulls off her outer things to reveal a stunning bikini then slowly walks into the water and gets in, much in the same way she did in her new Instagram video. It proved to be a really memorable TV moment that has lived on in the time since.
Daddario said of the moment later that she really did understand the dynamics of strangers meeting and analyzing one another present on the TV series. She also spoke about her character Rachel playing that bikini trump card:
We’re all the same at the end of the day, this instinct to win. ‘I see that I’m being judged,’ or ‘I see that I’m in a conversation that I’m not winning, so what’s my trump card?’ And that’s what Rachel feels. The response she gets from her looks is such that she knows it’s there. And in this one situation, she’s like, ‘OK, here!’
While things are shut down due to the actors’ and writers’ strikes right now, Mike White had already brought in a Season 1 character with Jennifer Coolidge in The White Lotus Season 2 cast and with Natasha Rothwell returning for Season 3. Plus,White has expressed interest in bringing other characters back in future seasons, noting at one point that an “all-star cast” would be fun for the show to try out.
So, I guess what I’m saying is I’m just glad Alexandra Daddario is getting that bikini practice in.