Warning: Spoilers for Season 2 of “The White Lotus” below.
Although a big theme of “The White Lotus” Season 2 is infidelity, all of the cheating happens off screen — which led viewers to wonder if any of it actually happened.
Seth Meyers was clearly one of these fans, and took the opportunity to ask Aubrey Plaza while she was on his show Monday night whether or not her character, Harper, only kissed Cameron (Theo James).
In Episode 6 of Season 2, Harper — who is becoming frustrated with the lack of physical intimacy between her and her husband, Ethan (Will Sharpe) — decides to start flirting with the overtly jerky Cameron. Ethan sees the two flirting from afar at a bar, and then later notices that they’re both gone.
In a jealous rage, Ethan runs back to his hotel room, which has its hatch locked. When Ethan finally gets into the hotel room he shares with Harper, he also discovers that the adjoining door to Cameron’s room is open. Ethan confronts his wife about his suspicions that she cheated on him. Harper initially says that nothing happened. But in the Season 2 finale, she admits to Ethan that she and Cameron kissed — and insists that’s all they did.
“What happened is, we did some stuff, and I hated every minute of it. It was disgusting and there was no penetration,” Plaza told Meyers when the talk show host asked her what really went down between the characters, before adding “I don’t know!”
When Plaza asked Meyers what he thinks happened, he said that he believed what Harper told Ethan, and that the two shared “just a kiss.”
“Just a kiss?” Plaza said, surprised.
“I think maybe each of you grabbed the other one’s butt — through clothes,” Meyers said.
“I think I grabbed a little more than that,” Plaza said.
James also believed “something else” happened between his character and Harper while speaking to Vulture Monday.
“… It was probably more than she let on by half,” James admitted to the outlet. “Maybe not the most extreme version of that scenario, but there was something else.”
James added: “I always read it as Harper says, pretty much. I think she feels oddly attracted to this monster that is Cameron, but she’s also trying to use the incident to wake Ethan from his existential and sexual reverie.”
Plaza told Meyers that she thinks the juicier story from her “White Lotus” arc is whatever happened between her husband and Cameron’s wife, Daphne (Meghann Fahy).
In the Season 2 finale, Ethan confronts Daphne, saying that their spouses cheated on them with each other. In response Fahy’s Daphne — in a phenomenal 30-second performance — convinces Ethan to follow her to a nearby deserted island, where they also presumably engage in a dalliance that’s not seen by viewers.
“But what does my husband do? That’s the real question … What does he do with, ya know, what’s-her-face?” Plaza said, referencing the aforementioned scene.
Fahy had her own take on what happens between Daphne and Ethan while talking to Vanity Fair in an interview published Monday.
“I think [Daphne] just sees this guy that looks so broken that she really wants to help him feel better,” Fahy said.
Shs added that Daphne’s role in her relationship with the couple she’s vacationing with in “The White Lotus” is “to teach not just Harper but also Ethan that they have other options.”
“I don’t think that she [goes to the island with Ethan] to get back at Cameron or anything,” Fahy said. “I genuinely think in her strange way that’s like an empathetic thing that she’s doing, the way that she’s trying to take care of these people.”
Although Fahy was forthright about Daphne’s frame of mind, she wasn’t so much when telling a story to Meyers earlier this month about why she and Plaza got lost on a hike they took while filming in Sicily. To hear Plaza’s trippy side of the story, watch the video above.