Aubrey Plaza says she and Mike White traveled to Sweden to stalk her ex-boyfriend: ‘True story’

Aubrey Plaza revealed she and writer/producer Mike White go way back.

The actor stars in the second season of White’s smash hit HBO series, The White Lotus, which came out at the end of last year.

In a wide-ranging new interview with The New Yorker, the ever-offbeat Plaza recalled the time she and White went to Sweden to stalk her ex-boyfriend. Yes, really.

Plaza explained that she was working on a script about her search for her high school boyfriend from Sweden.

“I was very obsessed with him, because it was a first love kind of thing. And then, as all exchange programs do, it ended, and he went back to Sweden, and I was devastated,” she remembered.

She explained that their prematurely-ended relationship was something she “always kind of fixated on”, so, 10 years after the exchange programme ended, Plaza decided to track him down “in a kind of stalkerish scenario”.

Plaza told White about this story and he was hooked, offering to collaborate with her on the script for a film about the quest. Plaza said White insisted on going back to Stockholm with her to meet her ex-boyfriend.

“I met Mike White in Stockholm, and we travelled together to stalk my Swedish-exchange-student boyfriend together. That is a true story. We did that, and I didn’t know him at all.”

The actor said White wrote a “beautiful script” and filming was all set to begin in Spring 2020 when the Covid pandemic hit.

“It fell apart, and then he pivoted to The White Lotus. So, the movie never happened,” Plaza explained.

That’s how Plaza ended up in the HBO drama: “He just told me, ‘Don’t take a job next year. I want to work with you on this show,’ ... So it’s a really wild story of how I ended up on White Lotus, but it has to do with my Swedish-exchange-student boyfriend.”

This week, Johnny Knoxville appeared to accidentally give away the location setting for The White Lotus season three.

“[White] and I had been in Tokyo together. I think that’s where the next… oh, I’m not giving anything away. I might call him again as soon as this is over,” the Jackass star let slip.