Sabrina Impacciatore reacts to ‘darker’ “White Lotus” season 3, says she wants to reprise her role: ‘I miss Valentina’

Key Points

• Italian actress Sabrina Impacciatore broke out in the states for her role as hotel manager Valentina in season 2 of HBO’s acclaimed The White Lotus.

• She reveals she tuned into the most recent season 3, describing the tension of the “darker” season as “overwhelming.”

• Impacciatore also says it “would be a dream” to return to that world, calling creator Mike White “one of the men of my life.”

Long after checking out from the White Lotus Sicily resort in season 2, Sabrina Impacciatore continues to be a fan of HBO’s acclaimed satire The White Lotus.

The Italian actress, who broke out in the states as hotel manager Valentina in the Italy-set sophomore season, tells Entertainment Weekly during a larger conversation for The Paper’s cover story that she tuned into the most recent Thailand-set season 3, marveling at just how dark the storylines were this time around.

“As usual, he’s surprising us even more than we could expect,” she says of creator Mike White, whom she praises as a “genius.” “It had the spirit of the first two [seasons, but] it went darker — so, so much darker. I found that very, very interesting. The comedy was not so present anymore.” At times, the tension was so “overwhelming” that Impacciatore had to stop mid-episode and return to it at a later time. “It was too much.” 

Between Timothy Ratliff’s ongoing murder-suicide plot to avoid financial ruin and Rick Hatchett’s pursuit to avenge the murder of his father, it was, indeed, a tense season.

White brought back past characters for the season, including Natasha Rothwell’s Belinda and Jon Gries’ Greg Hunt. Impacciatore says it “would be a dream” to return to that world again for future seasons. “I have to confess, a couple of days ago, I was talking with someone about Valentina and I started to cry because I miss Valentina so much,” she says. “Valentina, to me, was an experience — a human journey that I really lived very deeply. It’s not that I acted Valentina, I lived Valentina. So now I miss her.”

Impacciatore recalls screaming and crying upon learning that she nabbed her first Emmy nomination for the supporting role last year. “I did not believe it because to me it was just impossible,” she says. “No one expected that to happen.” 

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Playing the Sicilian hotel manager will be a “lifetime memory forever” for Impacciatore, who notes that the period before booking the role was a difficult one. Impacciatore had been thriving in her native Italy before being cast by HBO, headlining successful theatrical stage productions and taking home awards, as well as writing and starring in a feature (2018’s A Casa Tutti Bene, or There Is No Place Like Home) with famed Italian director and screenwriter Gabriele Muccino. “It was almost the highest point of my career in Italy,” Impacciatore says. “Then I stopped working for almost two years.

“I can work only if I’m inspired and nothing interesting was arriving,” she says. “So I decided to say no to all the things that I didn’t like. I ate only eggs for one year because I didn’t have money.” The ensuing COVID-19 pandemic made it all the more difficult to find substantial roles. “And then also a tragedy in my life happened because I lost my dad,” Impacciatore shares. The call to audition for Valentina came about a month after her beloved father’s passing. “Can you imagine? So to me, this is connected also to my dad,” Impacciatore says of the role. “I think he was part of this.”

White has “changed my life forever,” Impacciatore says. “He’s one of the men of my life.”

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly