Alexandra Daddario Didn't Expect True Detective To Be Anything More Than A Resume Filler

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In the first season of "True Detective," which aired on HBO in 2014, Alexandra Daddario plays Lisa Tragnetti, a court stenographer who has an affair with the hard-boiled Detective Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson). The first season flashes back and forth between 1995 and 2012, and revelations from the past have a bearing on the criminal case being investigated in the present. Lisa's scenes all take place in 1995, and she eventually tells Marty's wife about the pair's extramarital dalliance. Daddario also famously engaged in a nude sex scene with Harrelson, fulfilling a nudity quotient that seems to be a requirement at HBO.

As it would turn out, her small "True Detective" role marked a turning point in her career.

Prior to "True Detective," Daddario spent many years, as many actors do, paying her dues. She had played some small roles in the mid-2000s, including "pretty girl" in Noah Baumbach's "The Squid and the Whale" and "girlfriend" in "Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience." More visibly, Daddario played the fierce and intelligent Annabeth, daughter of Athena, one of the central characters in 2010's "Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief." Then, in 2013, she played the starring role in "Texas Chainsaw 3D," where she did an exemplary job being terrified by Leatherface. "True Detective," however (and its nude scene in particular), catapulted her into the public eye, leading to her agent getting calls immediately after the episode with her famous sex scene aired.

In a 2021 interview with Collider, Daddario recalled what a boost "True Detective" was to her career ... which was odd to her, as she felt it was just one gig among many at the time.

Daddario claimed that she never knew what acting jobs were going to be the ones that boosted her career and what ones would go nowhere. Her philosophy, it seems, was to merely look at the most interesting job that's immediately in front of her and do what sounds most exciting. This would sometimes lead to weird duds like the awful COVID-19-inspired dystopia sci-fi drama "Songbird," but it would sometimes net her an Emmy nomination instead, as it did with the first season of "The White Lotus." Likewise, Daddario has since landed the lead role in the AMC series "The Mayfair Witches," a fairly popular magical soap opera based on the literary works of Anne Rice.

Back in 2014 when she accepted her role in "True Detective," however, she expected nothing to come of it, career-wise. She was literally playing "the other woman." Hence, the unexpected positive reaction to her performance, while surprising, forced her to develop a kind of mental agility, permitting her to shed certain kinds of expectations about her career choices. As Daddario explained to Collider:

"The biggest successes I've had in my career, I did not expect or they were completely out of the blue. And the biggest jobs I've booked, I had no concept that I was gonna book them. So I've tried to maintain my sanity or whatever my viewpoint on life is, I try not to put too many expectations on things. I do have more knowledge and understanding of tracking and how things are gonna work, but 'True Detective,' for example [...] it's like, I didn't see what was gonna happen from that coming at all."

Daddario added that she wasn't even invited to the show's premiere. But when the press started rolling in, she quickly set a new goal for herself: she was to merely be as good as she could be in whatever gig she managed to land.

Was it a mercenary choice? No. Daddario admitted she just wanted to put a different kind of role on her filmography. When asked about her career intentions when playing Lisa, Daddario was frank, telling Collider:

"The tactical decision was, I went in for the audition and they seemed vaguely interested, and it was for a different role and I was like, 'Well, they're vaguely interested and I love these actors and I love [director] Cary Fukunaga and I want to be in this show, so let me force them to hire me.' I thought I need something on my résumé that shows that I can do something different, or something. I just thought it would look good on my résumé."

Daddario was also frank about the fact that her part required her to disrobe. She understood that she might have only been seen by audiences as "naked woman" and not as a character. It seems, however, that her fame came because of the nudity. She recalled hearing from her agent only moments after her first episode aired:

"I didn't expect to have what I had happen, happen. which was [...] getting naked on a show where I didn't have a huge role, I didn't know what to expect. And then, of course, that episode aired and my manager called — and I'll never forget it — I was sitting on my boyfriend's couch and she calls me in the morning after the episode aired and she was like, 'The phone's been ringing off the hook all morning. The phone won't stop ringing!' And all of a sudden, everyone in town wanted to meet with me. And then I booked 'San Andreas.'"

"San Andreas," for those not familiar, was a high-profile 2015 Hollywood disaster movie starring Dwayne Johnson (with Daddario costarring as his on-screen daughter). It was a noticeable hit, making just over $474 million against a $110 million budget.

When it came to actually shooting the nude scene that made her famous, Daddario didn't think much of it. Back in 2014, she talked with MTV News about playing Lisa, stating that the nude scenes were just part of the job. The more challenging aspect, she explained, was understanding Lisa, a type of character she had never played before. Daddario knew she would have to disrobe and tried not to worry about it. Indeed, when she arrived on set to shoot the scene, Harrelson couldn't have been more professional about it. Because he was all business, Daddario felt comfortable and safe. In her own words:

"Woody has done so many different things. He made the whole situation very comfortable. [...] It wasn't anything awkward in that sense. I tried not to think about it too much before shooting the more intimate scenes and just sort of did it. [Harrelson] has been there done that. He's Woody Harrelson. If there's anybody that I was going to be comfortable with, it's somebody like him."

Did she ever resent the fact that undressing served as a career catalyst? Not really. Daddario was pragmatic; she understood that she needed to get more work, and it didn't matter how she got there. She discussed her newfound popularity after appearing on "True Detective" in a 2022 interview with Men's Journal, explaining:

"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. [...] 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."

In addition to starring in "The Mayfair Witches," Daddario voiced Lois Lane in "Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths" (the DC animated film that Mark Hamill was accidentally left out of). She also played a recurring role on Season 3 of "The Girlfriend Experience," an anthology series based on Steven Soderbergh's 2009 feature of the same name.

"True Detective" can be purchased on Prime Video.