Adam DiMarco: It was the nicest hotel I’ve ever stayed at. When I got there, and I saw my view, I cried. It was so beautiful. Socially, it was another planet at times, and time really slowed down because it was the off-season and there were no other guests. Sort of eerie. We had to entertain ourselves—like our summer camp is actually a Four Seasons hotel where we could have a movie night in that restaurant. The best was the karaoke night.
MF: I did not sing too much.
AD: I think Meghann abstained from singing, she was being humble because she was on Broadway. She probably just hopped on some Spice Girls when the mic was going around. Haley [Lu Richardson] and I sang “Summer Nights” from Grease.
You were shooting with some born-and raised Italians—did they take you to school?
AD: [Beatrice Grannò, Simona Tabasco, and Sabrina Impacciatore] all live in Rome, actually, so they were kind of experiencing newness along with us. They’re also trying to do a dialect, so we were all sort of in a new place. Sabrina’s a pretty well-known actor over there, so we would drop her name sometimes trying to get into clubs or whatever. That was [Aubrey Plaza’s] idea, which is funny imagining Aubrey having to name drop to get in anywhere.
The characters definitely leave the grounds more than their season one counterparts—tell me the place you loved seeing and shooting in the most.
DB: The city of Noto, where episode three of the season, at the palazzo, is set. It is just an incredible Baroque town in the middle of nowhere in the south of Sicily. There’s actually a Chef’s Table episode about this restaurant called Cafe Sicilia in Noto, and it’s probably the best dessert breakfast—it’s called granita, basically Italian ice—I’ve ever had in my life. When we were filming, we were in the midst of this giant flower festival where the city was covered in blossoms. The tricky bit is that the palazzo is actually in Palermo, and [Tom Hollander’s] palazzo in Palermo is actually in Noto. They’re swapped. The reason is very simple—the Noto palazzo was very gauche and fit for the party later in the season, to be thrown by Hollander’s character. And the one in Palermo is serpentine and softer, for this sort of girls’ night between Daphne and Harper.