Alexandra is featured on the cover of Men’s Journal! You can find photos from her photoshoot along with scans from the issue in the gallery! Enjoy!

Men’s Journal – Flashing cameras catch her rock-candy blue eyes, cherry bomb lips and megawatt smile. Swathed in sheer pearlescence, sleek dark hair skimming her porcelain shoulders, she shifts her 5’8″ goddess body for another strobe of photographs. On the crowded red carpet at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, Alexandra Anna Daddario, 36, is Venus in a constellation of stars.

Less than 72 hours later, she’s simply “Alex,” in no makeup, hair undone, feet up on the counter in her Brooklyn kitchen, wearing what she dubs her “comfy, stretched-out travel jeans.” The NYC native has called L.A. home since 2009, but often returns east. “I’m definitely still a New Yorker, but I sometimes come back and I’m like, ‘Wow, how did I live here so long? Everyone’s so brash.’ And I was too,” she laughs. “I used to put my headphones on and walk through the city at 100 miles per hour, dodging tourists and getting mad at people who didn’t order their coffee quickly enough, but I’ve certainly softened and become more California. Even yesterday, I was walking around New York doing errands, and was like, ‘Hi, how are you?’ to people, and everyone’s looking at me like I’m being far too polite. New York’s fast, it’s like do your business and get out, but I do think I still have that part of me. I have no time for small talk.”

Lucky for us, she’s carved out time for Big Talk after the surreal high of the 74th Primetime Emmys, where she was up for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series in season 1 of Mike White’s Hawaii meets Hitchcock social satire, The White Lotus. A pupu platter of Emmy gold, Lotus won 10 awards, including Outstanding Limited Series. While she didn’t take home a statue for her nuanced performance as troubled-in-paradise newlywed Rachel Patton, Alex is all love for her fellow castmates and the Big Kahuna who made it all possible.

“Mike White, he’s just incredible, and Jennifer [Coolidge] and Murray [Bartlett], and all the other people nominated from the show, it’s just such a talented group, and the cool thing about it is that Mike gave us all an opportunity to shine in something really brilliant that came out of his mind,” she says. “I think we all feel really lucky. We had this intimate and crazy experience shooting it, and to end up on the stage winning an Emmy for the show and just being part of that—I mean, the only reason I was up there was because Mike cast me, and gave me the opportunity to show people what I could do—I’m really grateful and proud. I have just been feeling a lot of gratitude the last couple of days.”

Animal Instinct
The cast’s spirit of aloha is a 180 from their twisted dynamic on Lotus, a jungle of sex, money and primal power plays that unfold at the fictional White Lotus Resort Maui. In one bitingly clever scene, Alex’s character, Rachel, sitting in her snow-leopard swim cover-up, looks like marked prey to Olivia and Paula, her smug Gen Z predators on pool chaises. Licking their chops, throwing machete-sharp questions at Rachel about her quasi career and the wealthy husband she’s “scored” who can pay off her student loans, they decimate her in minutes. But just when you think Rachel is roadkill, she slowly unbuttons her cover-up and rises in her ivory bikini, a lioness. Strolling away, swinging her haunches, she leaves the girls speechless, save for a deflated “Oh, shit.” It’s her Darwinian checkmate.

“Rachel taking her clothes off and showing off her body at the end, sort of as revenge, it’s so funny because it’s a constant power struggle,” Alex says. “The show’s all about this constant power struggle between all different types of people. It’s animal instinct. Even when her husband, Shane, is in the pool, instead of hanging out with her, he’s chatting up the young women. The whole point of it is, we’re all just jealous, small, instinctual animals, and we make these mistakes that we don’t even know we’re making, and we try to justify them, and we aren’t analyzing our place in the world and our effect on others. 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!’”

When it comes to the response others have had to her looks in real life, Alex admits it’s a double-edged sword. “I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, but for example, when True Detective came out and I was naked on the show, and it was huge for my career and the phone was ringing and I got some work off of it, I think that I hadn’t been that aware of my sex appeal prior to that,” she says, reflecting. “I tried not to take it too seriously. I really love acting, in my heart I’m just a theater nerd, and I sort of took that and said, ‘This is good for my career,’ and embraced it.” She pauses. “I really love what I do. I happen to have a lot of fun with getting dressed up and playing roles, and even on red carpets, I’m kind of playing a role. And it’s great, it’s fun, but I think it can be negative, some of the attention, and so I try to ignore some of the more negative aspects of it.”

What does Alex think her husband of six months, producer Andrew Form, whom she describes as “kind, loyal, trustworthy and funny,” finds most attractive about her? She laughs and says I’d have to ask him, but adds, “I know he loves my heart and I’m kind as well, and I make him laugh. We make each other laugh, and we both deeply care about each other’s well-being, apart from each other. I think that’s a healthy thing, that we both really want the other person to be happy in their own sphere, because we each have our own things going on. And I think he’d love me no matter what I looked like.”

Love ‘n Louisiana
Alex’s path to true love was a winding one. “I’ve been in much worse relationships than the one Rachel’s in with Shane,” she says with refreshing honesty. “I’ve certainly been cheated on, and then for some inexplicable reason, stayed. Or lied to, or betrayed in some way, and stayed. And in a way, that’s what Rachel’s doing. She’s staying in a relationship that isn’t healthy for her and she’s trying to change herself to make him happy, and I certainly have done that before.”

Speaking of relationship drama, when asked about Wait, the Maroon 5 video she starred in with Adam Levine (where he literally unravels), it still strikes an emotional chord. “I loved that music video,” she says. “I’ve had that long-term relationship when you know it’s wrong but it’s really hard to leave. It’s very sad, it’s very profound. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a perfect example; it’s letting go of the beautiful moments and the love you had. But I don’t think you have to let it go. It can still exist and you can still move on, and I think that’s something you learn as you get older. I certainly struggled with accepting that for a long time, and now that I’m with the absolute right person at the exact right time and I’m so happy, I look back and think about all the things I learned and the things people taught me, and even if I met someone one time, what that experience taught me.”

While Alex met her Absolute Right Person in one of those lock-eyes-on-a-Manhattan-street moments straight out of a John Cusack movie, she doesn’t discount finding love online. “I certainly have used technology to date,” she says. “Once you’re having coffee across from a stranger, it doesn’t matter how you met, because we’re all human beings, just trying to find a connection.” The key, she believes, is staying open. “It’s keeping a little optimism and interest of ‘What’s their story?’ especially as we get older, because people have more interesting stories to tell. I think any time you’re in front of another human being, you never know what can happen. So just because I happened to meet my husband in a different way, I might as well have met him on an app.”

While Alex and Andrew’s wedding last June at Preservation Hall in The Big Easy was a perfectly orchestrated affair, down to its jazzy second line through the French Quarter, the duo has yet to plan a honeymoon. “So far, we drove from New Orleans to the panhandle of Florida over a long weekend. We had three days,” she deadpans. “But we’ll take a bigger honeymoon when we have the chance. Both of us are working too much right now.” Assuming they won’t be booking the White Lotus’ Pineapple Suite? “No,” she laughs. “Nothing wrong with Maui, but I’m thinking an adventure honeymoon might be fun, like climbing a mountain or seeing a cool new city.”

In the meantime, Alex is ready to ring in 2023. “I’m obsessed with New Year’s Eve. It’s my favorite holiday of the entire year. I like it better than Christmas, by far. I find it to be a restart; you can set the year off on a good note. To that end,” she laughs, “I’ve had some really bad New Year’s Eves.”

Ideally, she’ll tick off her travel bucket list. “I really want to go to Iceland or Alaska or Norway and see the Northern Lights,” she says. “January 1 is unfortunately a terrible time to see them because it’s so overcast, but something like that. Something magical. But even if we’re just having dinner at home, that’s still magical to me, and singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at midnight. It’s an opportunity to get together, collectively welcoming the new year. It’s a nice feeling, like a big meditation.”

Mayfair Magic
Another reason for Alex to celebrate the new year is her new series, Mayfair Witches, airing on AMC+ in early 2023. Based on the similarly titled Anne Rice trilogy, it’s a gothic, supernatural horror/ fantasy set in a nightmarish New Orleans, where a shape-shifting spirit named Lasher lurks in the shadows, women mysteriously “jump” from balconies, masquerade parties lead to paranormal sex and family members aren’t who they seem. Alex stars as Rowan Mayfair, a strong-willed neurosurgeon who feels herself coming into a deadly, dark power.

But this isn’t your typical monster mash-up. “Anne Rice is an incredibly detailed and layered writer, her novels are intense and out-of-the-box, and I think that’s why people love them so much,” says Alex. “When you put the dysfunction of human beings and all of our jealousy and lust and rage and grief and love, when you put all of that together and add magic powers or special circumstances, it creates a fascinating story. So, diving into this show, the twists and turns and offbeat things that happen were fun to play and so different than anything I’ve done, and we embrace the Anne Rice of it all, if that makes sense.”

Looking ahead, Alex, who has been in the business 20-plus years, is laser-focused. “What I’m really drawn to now using this new opportunity to do different kinds of work is, does someone have a unique personal story to tell, or what kind of work has this director done before? Todd Field, I’m obsessed with him as a director. He did In the Bedroom and Little Children and has a new movie [Tár], with Cate Blanchett. When you watch those movies you go, ‘Oh my God, how amazing would it be to be on that set, telling that story?’ That really gets me excited. I would love to do a small part in a movie with him. But you have to find exactly the right fit. That’s always the goal.”

And should the stars align, here’s hoping Alex reappears in a third season of Lotus. Where would she like Rachel to go next, if given the chance? She chews on it a moment. “Oh gosh… Japan? It’s just such a cool place. I did a movie there, I’ve been on vacation there, I love, love Tokyo. I love Kyoto,” she says. As for Rachel’s arc, Alex concedes that Mike White could hypothetically come up with something a thousand times better, but based on her own interpretation of her character’s journey, she’d be game for Rachel ditching her trophy-wife life and going full-on feral.

“I’d love to see her really fuck up, a lot. I think that she needs to really fuck up and get herself into a shitty situation before she can get herself out,” she says. “Maybe she needs to lose it, or maybe she has an affair, this really dark and weird thing. I think she really needs to make some big mistakes before she finds her way and finds her confidence.”

Alex’s Top 10
Best daytime date

“Hiking with my dog. The man can come too.”

Meal you’d like to be cooked

“Can he pick me up sushi?”

Greatest gift

“Oh, diamonds! Marilyn Monroe said it!”

Dream wheels

“Shark Blue Porsche 911.”

Go-to cocktail

“Mezcal margarita with salt.”

Music must

“Nina Simone.”

Favorite city

“Rome.”

Beard or no beard

“Beard, but not two-day stubble that gives you beard-burn.”

Biggest turn-on

“Someone who you can feel comfortable trying things with and expressing yourself without judgment.”

Biggest turnoff

“Being mean.”