It Was Her First-Ever Audition Tape. She Landed a Lead on ‘The White Lotus’

Here’s a list of some of the things Marissa Long isn’t allowed to talk about.

The name of her character on The White Lotus. Anything else about any other characters on The White Lotus. Any plot details about the show, which she’s been shooting in the south of France for much of the spring. Whether she shared any scenes with Helena Bonham Carter before the British actress abruptly exited the series just weeks into production. Whether Laura Dern, who replaced Carter, is playing Long’s mother (the two were spotted wearing what appeared to be color-coordinated outfits while filming in Cannes last month, spurring endless online speculation).

More from The Hollywood Reporter

And, of course, who will end up dead at the end of the upcoming season of Mike White’s all-star bacchanal — because, of course, somebody always does.

“I don’t think I can say,” Long offers with a polite smile whenever a forbidden question is lobbed at her over a Zoom call from Saint Tropez. “Let’s steer away from that.”

Still, there is one detail about the show — which White has teased will be “a bit about fame” — that Long does let slip. She acknowledges that the character she portrays is a young actress promoting a film at the Cannes Film Festival. Which, when you think about it, is entirely fitting — in a deeply Mike White sort of way — considering that Long has never been an actress before. Until very recently, she was a 25-year-old model from Tulsa whose closest brush with the business had been helping her actor-boyfriend record audition tapes in a bedroom in the Valley.

But then, one day last November, she decided to tape one of her own — and ended up with a leading role on the most prestigious HBO series since Bran Stark ascended to the Iron Throne, or at least since Tom Wambsgans took over Waystar Royco.

“It was just the craziest thing that could ever happen, the very definition of surreal,” she says of her astounding beginner’s luck. “My boyfriend was truly only happy for me, but he was in shock. It was just like, ‘Whoa.’”

Even before she landed the White Lotus gig — cast alongside such seasoned performers as Steve Coogan, Vincent Cassel, Sandra Bernhard, Rosie Perez, Chris Messina and Heather Graham, among a half-dozen others — Long was clearly on cordial terms with the universe. Although she grew up about as far from the Côte d’Azur as is geographically possible — Oklahoma, where her dad manages properties for an industrial gas company and her mom works in holistic health — she got noticed early in life. By 15, she had signed with a local modeling agency and was soon flying around the country doing fashion shoots for Garage Clothing, Hollister and Kylie Cosmetics.

Acting was not on her to-do list. Moving to L.A. definitely was. She packed her bags two days after her 18th birthday, settling at first in Koreatown (“It was the cheapest apartment that I could find”) while continuing to model. Then, about five years ago, at a party in Malibu, she met her boyfriend — Tanner Zagarino, who has a growing resume of his own, playing the gay fraternity brother on season three of The Summer I Turned Pretty and the impossibly handsome teen who makes Jason Segel choke on a grape on season two of Shrinking.

That’s when Long learned about self-tapes.

“We did hundreds of them,” she says of the auditions she helped Zagarino record. “I would just be all these random characters for him behind our iPhones. We had so much fun with it. And he would encourage me. He was like, ‘You should try an acting class.’”

So, she did, then signed with her boyfriend’s manager, Brandon Bisig at Canopy Media Partners — who also happens to rep Adam DiMarco, Michael Imperioli’s son in White Lotus’ second season — and within a few months was recording her own very first audition tape, this time with Tanner feeding her lines from the other side of the phone.

Turned out it was a doozy.

“We’d been looking for a while — we must have seen at least 100 actors, no exaggeration,” says White Lotus executive producer Dave Bernad. “But then we saw Marissa’s audition, and the reaction was immediate. It felt like we finally found her. Even on the tape, she had such authenticity. She just lights up the screen.”

Long’s reaction to landing the part was pretty immediate, as well. “I was in my bedroom closet getting ready to go to breakfast with Tanner and my manager called,” she remembers. “I’d never had a more physical response to any moment in my life. I was weeping and jumping for joy all in one go. It was really unique.”

She’s been shooting in France since April — the whole season takes about six months to complete — learning the job on the job. “She’s not experienced enough to know some of the different on-set vernaculars, so you have to be a little patient,” says Bernad. “But she’s very natural and very comfortable on camera, which is something you can’t teach. It’s just an inherent quality some actors have, and she has it. I was on the set last week watching a scene and I was shocked. I was thinking to myself, ‘I can’t believe this is the first time she’s doing this.’”

Neither can Long. “I’m having the time of my life,” she says. “The cast and all of us, we’ve gotten really close really fast because we’re all together in this beautiful place. Every day we wake up, we go outside, we’re like, ‘Oh my God, this is the coolest thing of all time.’”