Something in the TV atmosphere shifted when Sabrina Impacciatore’s Valentina took one look at Jennifer Coolidge in The White Lotus season two. After Coolidge’s Tanya asks the hotel manager to “guess who I am,” Impacciatore improvised an instantly classic response—“Peppa Pig”—and proved herself able to spar with the show’s most beloved cast member. She got a chance to show off even more in The Paper, the Office spin-off that debuted in September. Domhnall Gleeson plays the idealistic new editor of the Toledo Truth Teller, while Impacciatore is conniving managing editor Esmeralda Grand—a former dating-show contestant who devotes her days to writing clickbait and scheming to grab power.
It is not lost on Impacciatore, now 57, that her two most famous characters echo ones originally portrayed by men: Steve Carell in The Office, and Emmy winner Murray Bartlett in season one of The White Lotus. “It was like a blessing,” she tells Vanity Fair, closing her eyes, “respecting these two incredible artists, but also having a big responsibility as a woman, especially for a woman raised in a complex country like Italy. There is still a lot of masculism”—or men’s-rights advocacy—“in my country, so I represent a kind of miracle, to be honest—an actress, a woman that’s by herself with no other man next to me.”
Before The White Lotus, the Rome-born Impacciatore worked steadily in her native country. But beyond a cameo in Mel Gibson’s 2004 blockbuster The Passion of the Christ, she was unknown to American audiences. But other English-language projects have followed her White Lotus breakthrough, including the Viola Davis–led action-comedy G20 and an upcoming farce cowritten by David Wain and Ken Marino that reunites Mad Men’s Jon Hamm and John Slattery.
“I’ve been traveling a lot this year, in LA, New York, London. I just came back from Paris, and I feel a bit unsettled, to be honest,” she says at the start of our conversation. “These last three years I’ve seen only luggages, luggages, luggages. So this is the price to pay.” After a long day of rehearsals for a project that she can’t yet discuss, Impacciatore takes stock of the past few years—and why she won’t hold back about what it took for her to get here. “I have no filters. All day long I’m surprised by what I do, what I say, how I behave. It’s very entertaining. You never, never know what’s coming.”
Vanity Fair: You’ve compared acting in The White Lotus to experiencing an orgasm. Did you derive just as much pleasure from The Paper?
