Since starring in Season 3 of The White Lotus on the 2025 TV schedule, Aimee Lou Wood has been making headlines. Despite being made fun of on Saturday Night Live, the actress was stealing the show as Chelsea. Overall, her performance was beloved, and Wood, who was nominated for an Emmy for playing Chelsea, is now opening up about her experience on the series and how it also helped her overcome body image issues.
One of the great things about acting is that people can pretend to be someone else for a brief time, and it’s like nothing else matters. And Wood feels that exact way. Speaking to that point, the BAFTA winner opened up to Harper’s Bazaar about performing and how freeing a role can be:
Acting has always been a safe place for me to work out my feelings. I think for that reason a role will hit me in the heart, in the gut.
I love that acting can be that safe space for a lot of people.
For Wood, working on The White Lotus helped her become more confident in her body. The story explained that having to film scenes for the show in a bikini brought back the actress's body dysmorphia. She had it as a teenager, and it returned during this shoot. However, she was able to overcome it by harnessing Chelsea's confidence, as she explained:
I shook myself out of it by thinking, 'It’s not about whether Aimee wants to show her body or not – Chelsea does.'
Chelsea's confidence seems to have helped Wood find confidence in her body again, which is great and inspiring. And like her, many other celebrities have gotten candid about body image issues and overcoming them, including Janelle Monáe, who previously opened up about finding confidence in their own body after feeling shame for showing it.
Now, along with this personal situation, Wood’s time on The White Lotus has been quite a roller coaster. There had been rumors that she and Walton Goggins were feuding, and she also doubled down on being called out on SNL following the parody sketch that made fun of her. SNL reportedly invited Wood to appear on the show after the sketch aired, but she very directly said she wouldn’t do it. However, she's handled it all well, and she has spoken highly about working on the HBO hit.
It could be hard for Aimee Lou Wood to find a character like Chelsea again, and since The White Lotus is an anthology series, it can be expected that she won’t make another appearance in the future. However, I'm sure she'll find another fantastic part that can help her grow both professionally and personally.
The White Lotus is streaming now with an HBO Max subscription.
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