Meghann Fahy Almost Played A Completely Different White Lotus Character

If you’re a fan of Mike White’s globe-spanning anthology series “The White Lotus,” which kicked off its run on HBO with a trip to Hawaii in 2021, you probably remember Meghann Fahy’s unbelievable performance in the show’s second season in Sicily. As Daphne Sullivan — a woman whose bubbly exterior barely masks a darker side lurking just under the surface — Fahy is stunningly good alongside her on-screen husband Cameron Sullivan (a smirking Theo James) and their forced friends, Cameron’s work colleague Ethan Spiller (Will Sharpe) and his sneering wife Harper Spiller (Aubrey Plaza). As it turns out, Fahy was originally an option for a major character in the show’s first season: Rachel Patton, who was ultimately played by Alexandra Daddario.

In a profile featured in Vanity Fair, White sang Fahy’s praises, revealing something huge in the process: that he very nearly cast her as Rachel in Season 1 before apparently realizing that she would be particularly brilliant playing against the deadpan Plaza (and he was completely right). “You think she’s just a bimbo trophy wife, but she brought a depth that made it a more interesting dynamic,” White said of Fahy. “She’s just so likable that you’re like, ‘Yeah, I agree. Why follow the news? Why vote? I’m with her!'” White concluded, referring to Daphne’s laissez-faire attitude toward important world issues.

As the season progresses, though, Fahy starts lifting the curtain and showing you Daphne’s underbelly. After Daphne tricks Harper into a short girls’ getaway to a small Sicilian city called Noto — and Cameron and Ethan get into some, uh, trouble in their absence — Daphne also shares that she and Cameron like to play “games” to keep their marriage fresh. After that, she strongly indicates to Harper that her children were fathered by her personal trainer. Oh, and how about that ambiguous ending that suggests that Daphne seduces Ethan for fun?! It’s wild! Now that we’ve gotten a refresher about Daphne, what about Rachel Patton?

We meet Rachel’s new husband Shane Patton (a gloriously bratty Jake Lacy) in the very first moments of the “Lotus” series premiere as he prepares to leave the fictional, titular resort in Maui. Rachel is conspicuously absent, so for the entire season, you wonder if she’s the dead body being loaded onto a plane that’s observed by Shane in said moments — small spoiler alert: she’s not — but when we do meet her, the disconnect is immediately apparent between Rachel and Shane. While Shane is a snotty, spoiled, wealthy guy who immediately becomes irate that he’s not staying in the Pineapple Suite as planned but has been moved to a different luxury suite, Rachel is more soft-spoken and open about the fact that she’s a journalist who writes listicles for a living. (This revelation does, however, earn Rachel scorn from two of the most frightening teenage characters ever committed to film: Sydney Sweeney’s Olivia Mossbacher and her friend, Brittany O’Grady’s Paula.) 

Throughout Season 1, Shane keeps throwing embarrassing tantrums about not staying in the Pineapple Suite — specifically to the resort’s manager Armond (Murray Bartlett) — and when his equally spoiled mother Kitty (a perfectly cast Molly Shannon) shows up in Maui to intrude on Shane and Rachel’s honeymoon, things get immediately worse. (When Rachel suggests that she might not quit her job and rely on Shane’s money, Kitty is absolutely flabbergasted.) Rachel does survive the season, but that doesn’t mean she ends her story in a good place; after telling Shane she regrets marrying him, Rachel eventually finds him at the airport and tells him that she’s perfectly fine before the two head home together. 

Meghann Fahy absolutely could have played this role, but honestly, the woman could play Batman, and Alexandra Daddario was perfect as the deeply conflicted Rachel. As for Fahy, what has she been doing since “The White Lotus”?

If you’re a longtime fan of Fahy, you might remember that, before “The White Lotus,” she made a name for herself as Sutton Brady, an aspiring stylist for a major fashion magazine, in the Freeform original series “The Bold Type.” After “The White Lotus,” though, Fahy’s profile rose considerably. Not only did she score an Emmy nomination for playing Daphne Sullivan (even though she ultimately lost the award to her co-star, Jennifer Coolidge, who played heiress Tanya McQuoid), plenty of critics took notice of her gorgeously layered performance. So what did Fahy do in a post-Daphne world?

On the big screen, Fahy has appeared in projects like “Your Monster” and the clever thriller “Drop,” but on the small screen, she has been working steadily, presumably after casting agents saw how great she was in “The White Lotus.” In 2024, two years after playing Daphne, the actor appeared in a supporting — but pivotal — role in the Netflix original miniseries “The Perfect Couple,” based on Elin Hilderbrand’s bestselling beach read of the same name. Fahy plays Merritt Monaco, the maid of honor at her best friend Amelia Sacks’ (Eve Hewson) extravagant Nantucket wedding hosted by the wealthy Winbury family. (We learn in the very first episode that Merritt is murdered the night before Amelia marries Billy Howle’s Benji Winbury, and the rest of the series is dedicated to finding out who murdered her.)

One year later, Fahy led another Netflix original miniseries, “Sirens,” as the down-on-her-luck Devon DeWitt, whose sister Simone (“House of the Dragon” star Milly Alcock) works for a beautiful but eccentric billionaire named Michaela Kell (Julianne Moore). When Devon goes to find Simone at Michaela’s compound, things quickly get weird, sending Devon on a mission to extricate her sister from Michaela’s clutches.

As for “The White Lotus,” fans can stream both the first and second season of the series — and watch Daddario and Fahy’s excellent performances — on HBO Max now.