Leslie Bibb is a consummate conversationalist.

When she logs on to our Zoom call, she’s admittedly “scattered” after rushing to renew her passport in time for her first Paris Fashion Week. “I’m really, really excited, which sounds so silly, but I’ve never been and it’s like, in Paris,” she says as her eyes widen. She speaks in full-colour anecdotes with the unpretentious ease of a Facetime yap. 

She brings this same warmth to her role on the third season of HBO’s The White Lotus. Bibb plays Kate, a southern housewife who reunites with her childhood friends Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) and Laurie (Carrie Coon) for a girls’ trip in Thailand. 

When she was asked to read for the part, she was on location in Savannah, Georgia filming Clint Eastwood’s courtroom drama Juror #2. She recorded her audition in her co-star Chris Messina’s hotel room and read lines with her longtime partner Sam Rockwell, who happened to be in town for a visit. Bibb was still in Savannah when she learned that she booked the role. Alone in her suite in the middle of the night, she hung up the phone, got under the covers and let out a scream. “I just knew I was going to be changed forever.”

At the time of our call, she’s taken up residence at Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles. “This hotel is where Sam and I fell in love. It’s a beloved place for us,” she says. So, the story goes, Bibb first spotted Rockwell in 2007, while they were both in the lobby. Though her home base is now in New York with Rockwell, she’s staying at the L.A. landmark while she films the second season of Apple TV’s Palm Beach period dramedy Palm Royale. 

“I laugh because I went from six-and-a-half months living in a hotel to another four months living in a hotel,” she says. Her Chateau Marmont stay came on the heels of wrapping The White Lotus in Thailand, where the cast lived and filmed in the Koh Samui Four Seasons.

“I don’t think I’ll ever fully unpack what that six-and-a-half months was [in Thailand],” she reflects.

“It was kind of profound. And so challenging. And so exciting. And so scary. And so foreign to anything I knew and had ever experienced workwise.” 

Decades into her career, she’s proven herself as a comedy chameleon. She played a high school queen bee on Popular, Ryan Murphy’s before-its-time teen serial, she embodied a NASCAR WAG in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and she was a satan incarnate in the short-lived Netflix series God’s Favorite Idiot.

On The White Lotus, Kate has a saccharine veneer so opaque that it might actually be authentic. “Even though it seems like [Kate’s] stirring the pot, I think she’s telling herself she’s looking out for the other people,” Bibb reasons. “What seems gossip-y is well meaning.”

When Bibb, Monaghan and Coon were cast, they created a group chat to exchange childhood photos and begin crafting their characters’ shared backstory. Bibb wasn’t totally drawing from personal experience. “I had a group of friends growing up, like Jaclyn and Laurie,” she says. But the friendship was cut short, first by a move, then by a modelling competition that changed her life. 

In 1990, Iman, Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista crowned Bibb as the winner of a modelling contest on The Oprah Winfrey Show. At just 16, Bibb set off to go-sees in New York City and, eventually, acting lessons. “That was the most wonderful thing, but it also creates this weird divide. It makes people think, ‘Oh, well she can’t relate to me.’ I think because of those circumstances, I don’t have friends like [Laurie and Jaclyn].”

Three seasons in, The White Lotus has been a launching pad for emerging talent like Lukas Gage and Leo Woodall. But for beloved actors like Jennifer Coolidge and Meghann Fahy, getting cast on the show can guarantee a shift into a new stratosphere of stardom and a steadier stream of work. 

Bibb is poised for whatever comes after The White Lotus. She dubbed 2024 her year of ‘yes’ and says that her mantra for 2025 is hell yes. As she braces for the impact of her biggest role, she’s learning to unlearn and go off-script.

“Instead of feeling like it’s me against the world, what if the narrative was that there’s more than enough?”

This, she says, will require some adjusting. “[My whole life] I’ve told myself that I’m in it by myself.” Our 30-minute interview has seamlessly stretched into an hour without either of us noticing. She just has that effect. “I’m really trying to lean into the vulnerability, lean into the softness and always lean into curiosity.”

Photography: Leeor Wild (Laird and Good Company)
Videographer: Isabelle Passaglia
Styling: Anna Su
Makeup: Rachel Goodwin (A-Frame Agency using Valentino Beauty)
Hair: John D (Forward Artists) 
Stylist Assistant: Angie Martell
1st Photo Assistant: Garey Quinn
2nd Photo Assistant: Alex de La Hidalga
3rd Photo Asisstant: Myles Graham
Producer: Lauren Leyv (Hyperion)
Editorial and Creative Director: Sahar Nooraei
Fashion Director: Haley Dach
Art Director: Jessica Hui
Associate Art Director: Melissa Robinson
Social Media and Digital Editor: Sydney Goldhawk