Aubrey Plaza jokes about how she became friends with White Lotus co-star: ‘You stalked me’

Mark White’s ensemble black comedy returned for a second season last month

Aubrey Plaza has said she became friends with one of her co-stars on The White Lotus because they “stalked” her “for years”.

The Parks and Recreation star made the comments during a phone conversation with Haley Lu Richardson – who appears alongside Plaza on the hit HBO show – forInterview magazine.

The edited conversation was published online on Friday (4 November), and includes details about the actors’ friendship.

During the interview, Richardson, 27, recounted their first meeting at the MTV Awards in 2019 when both of them were presenting awards.

“And when I saw you I just felt overwhelmed with emotion because I’ve been a large fan of yours. I told you that I watch on repeat compilations of you doing interviews on YouTube,” she said, before adding, “Then you just stared at me and looked like you were going to kill me in my sleep.”

“I met you because you were stalking me,” Plaza, 38 joked, lightheartedly claiming, “Just for all the readers out there, Haley stalked me for years.”

She explained how Richardson showed up at the premiere for Child’s Play without an invite, after their encounter at the MTV Awards.

At the event, Richardson said, she “made friends with all of Aubrey’s friends so that I could get closer to her life”. As a result, one of Plaza’s friends invited her to “Aubrey’s birthday without asking Aubrey”.

“So I showed up and I remember we locked eyes at the bar and you just went, ‘You’,” she added.

Plaza replied: “And it didn’t matter how many mushrooms I had taken that night. I knew that my stalker had arrived.”

However, the 38-year-old actor added, “there was something deep down inside all along that was like, ‘Even though she’s stalking me, and maybe eventually she’ll cut me up into a million pieces and eat me, I like her. In fact, I love her’.

Describing the moment she found out Richardson had been cast alongside her on The White Lotus, Plaza said it was some “f***ing witchy karmic s***”.

Season two of Mike White’s award-winning black comedy, set in a luxury resort, returned last month.

Plaza plays employment lawyer Harper, dubbed “the exquisite ice queen of The White Lotus season two”.

Meanwhile, Richardson was cast as a “scathing GenZ assistant” to Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya.